
Glass. 



Book £& 



A H I STO RY O F 
SEA POWER 

BY 

WILLIAM OLIVER STEVENS 

AND 

ALLAN WESTCOTT 

PROFESSORS IN THE UNITED STATES NAVAL ACADEMY 



WITH MAPS, DIAGRAMS, 
AND ILLUSTRATIONS 




NEW XS^ YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






COPYRIGHT, I92O, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 









PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

OCT 20 1320 
©CI.A601074 



PREFACE 

This volume has been called into being by the absence of 
any brief work covering the evolution and influence of sea 
power from the beginnings to the present time. In a survey 
at once so comprehensive and so short, only the high points 
of naval history can be touched. Yet it is the hope of the 
authors that they have not, for that reason, slighted the sig- 
nificance of the story. Naval history is more than a sequence 
of battles. Sea power has always been a vital force in the 
rise and fall of nations and in the evolution of civilization. 
It is this significance, this larger, related point of view, which 
the authors have tried to make clear in recounting the story 
of the sea. In regard to naval principles, also, this general 
survey should reveal those unchanging truths of warfare 
which have been demonstrated from Salamis to Jutland. 
The tendency of our modern era of mechanical development 
has been to forget the value of history. It is true that the 
1 6" gun is a great advance over the 32-pounder of Trafalgar, 
but it is equally true that the naval officer of to-day must 
still sit at the feet of Nelson. 

The authors would acknowledge their indebtedness to Pro- 
fessor F. Wells Williams of Yale, and to the Classical Depart- 
ments of Harvard and the University of Chicago for valuable 
aid in bibliography. Thanks are due also to Commander 
C. C. Gill, U. S. N., Captain T. G. Frothingam, U. S. N. R., 
Dr. C. Alphonso Smith, and to colleagues of the Department 
of English at the Naval Academy for helpful criticism. As 
to the "References" at the conclusion of each chapter, it 



vi PREFACE 

should be said that they are merely references, not bibliogra- 
phies. The titles are recommended to the reader who may 
wish to study a period in greater detail, and who would prefer 
a short list to a complete bibliography. 

William Oliver Stevens 
. Allan Westcott 
United States Naval Academy, 
June, ip20. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I The Beginnings of Navies 15 

II Athens as a Sea Power: 

1. The Persian War 27 

2. The Peloponnesian War 39 

III The Sea Power of Rome: 

1. The Punic Wars 49 

2. The Imperial Navy 61 

IV The Navies of the Middle Ages: 

The Eastern Empire 71 

V The Navies of the Middle Ages [Continued?^. 

Venice and the Turk 87 

VI Opening the Ocean Routes: 

1. Portugal and the New Route to India . .110 

2. Spain and the New World 121 

VII Sea Power in the North: 

Holland's Struggle for Independence . . . 130 

VIII England and the Armada 1*5 

IX Rise of English Sea Power: 

Wars with the Dutch 168. 

X Rise of English Sea Power [Continued]: 

Wars with France to the French Revolution . 193 

XI Napoleonic Wars: 

The First of June and Camperdown . . . . 222 

XII Napoleonic Wars [Continued] : 

The Rise of Nelson 238 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER pAGB 

XIII Napoleonic Wars [Concluded]: 

Trafalgar and After 261 

XIV Revolution in Naval Warfare: 

Hampton Roads and Lissa 286 

XV Rivalry for World Power 312 

XVI The World War: 

The First Year 345 

XVII The World War [Continued]: 

The Battle of Jutland 3 85 

XVIII The World War [Concluded]: 

Commerce Warfare 410 

XIX Conclusion 44I 

Index . PT 

45 1 



MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Egyptian Ship 16 

Scene of Ancient Sea Power 18 

Greek War Galley 21 

Greek Merchant Ship 22 

Route of Xerxes' Fleet to Battle of Salamis .... 29 

Scene of Preliminary Naval Operations, Campaign of Salamis 30 

The Battle of Salamis, 480 B. C 34 

The Athenian Empire at its Height — About 450 B. C. . . 40 

Scene of Phormio's Campaign 41 

Battle of the Corinthian Gulf, 429 B. C 42 

Scene of the Punic Wars 50 

Roman Formation at Ecnomus "...... 54 

Carthaginian Tactics at the Battle of Ecnomus, 2 56 B. C. . . 55 

Points of Interest in the First Punic War 58 

Scene of Battle of Actium, 31 B. C 65 

The Saracen Empire at its Height, About 715 A. D 73 

Europe's Eastern Frontier 75 

Constantinople and Vicinity 77 

Theater of Operations, Venice and the Turk 88 

i6th Century Galley 93 

Battle of Lepanto, October 7,1571 106 

Cross-Staff 111 

The Known and Unknown World in 1450 113 

Portuguese Voyages and Possessions 115 

Flagship of Columbus 124 

Chart of A. D. 1589 126 

The Netherlands in the i6th Century 136 

ix 



x MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Galleon *47 

Cruise of the Spanish Armada 159 

Original "Eagle" Formation op the Armada . . . '. . 160 

The Course op the Armada up the Channel 161 

Scene op the Principal Naval Actions op the 17TH Century 

Between England and Holland and England and France . 171 

The Battle op Portland, February 18, 1653 174 

The Thames Estuary l8 7 

Three-Decked Ship op the Line, i8th Century .... 194 

The West Indies 2 °S 

Scene op the Yorktown Campaign 208 

Battle of the Virginia Capes, September 5, 1781 .... 210 

Battle of the Saints' Passage, April 12, 1782 214 

Battle of the First of June, 1794 231 

Battle op Camperdown, October 11, 1797 235 

Battle of Cape St. Vincent, February 14, 1797 ••• • 2 4 2 

The Nile Campaign, May- August, 1798 245 

Coast Map— From Alexandria to Rosetta Mouth op the Nile 249 

Battle of the Nile 251 

Battle of Copenhagen 257 

Position of British and Enemy Ships, March, 1805 ... 264 

Nelson's Pursuit op Villeneuve .... 4 .... 268 

Nelson's Victory 271 

Battle of Trafalgar, October 21, 1805 275 

Trafalgar, About 12:30 278 

Early Ironclads 288 

Bushnell's Turtle 294 

Fulton's Nautilus • • • 295 

Battle of Lissa, July 20, 1866 3°i 

Battle of the Yalu, September 17, 1894 308 

Approaches to Manila 316 

Battle op Manila, May i, 1898 318 

West Indies — Movements in Santiago Campaign . . . .323 



MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS xi 

PAGE 

Battle of Santiago, July 3, 1898 326 

Theater of Operations, Russo-Japanese War 329 

Harbor of Port Arthur 333 

Rojdestvensky's Cruise, October 18, 1904-MAY 27, 1905 . . 337 

Battle of Tsushima, May 27, 1905 340 

Heligoland Bight Action . . .352 

Heligoland Bight Action, Final Phase, 12:30-1:40 . . .354 

Battle of Coronel, November i, 1914 361 

Admiral Von Spee's Movements 362 

Battle of Falkland Islands, December 8, 1914 .... 365 

The Cruise of the Emden, September i-November 9, 1914 . 368 

Theater of Operations, in the North Sea 371 

Dogger Bank Action, January 24, 19 15 372 

The Approaches to Constantinople 376 

Dardanelles Defenses 380 

Cruising Formation of the British Battle Fleet . . . 388 

Beatty's Cruising Formation 389 

Type of German Battle Cruiser: The Derflinger . . . 391 

Type of British Battle Cruiser: The Lion 393 

Battle of Jutland: First Phase 395 

Type of British Battleship: The Iron Duke 399 

Battle of Jutland: Second and Third Phases 400 

Type of German Battleship: The Koenig 402 

Effects of the Blockade of Germany 423 

German Barred Zones 425 

Ocean-Going Types of German Submarines 428 

Ostend-Zeebrugge Area 433 

Zeebrugge Harbor with German Defenses and British 

Blockships 435 

British, Allied and Neutral Merchant Ships Destroyed by 

German Raiders, Submarines and Mines 436 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



A HISTORY OF 
SEA POWER 

CHAPTER I 

THE BEGINNINGS OF NAVIES 

Civilization and sea power arose from the Mediterranean, 
and the progress of recent archeological research has shown 
that civilizations and empires had been reared in the Medi- 
terranean on sea power long before the dawn of history. 
Since the records of Egypt are far better preserved than 
those of any other nation of antiquity, and the discovery 
of the Rosetta stone has made it possible to read them, we 
know most about the beginnings of civilization in Egypt. We 
know, for instance, that an Egyptian king some 2000 years 
before Christ possessed a fleet of 400 fighting ships. But 
it appears now that long before this time the island of Crete 
was a great naval and commercial power, that in the earliest 
dynasties of Egypt Cretan fleets were carrying on a commerce 
with the Nile valley. Indeed, the Cretans may have taught the 
Egyptians something of the art of building sea-going ships for 
trade and war. 1 At all events, Crete may be regarded as the 
first great sea power of history, an island empire like Great 
Britain to-day, extending its influence from Sicily to Palestine 
and dominating the eastern Mediterranean for many centuries. 
From recent excavations of the ancient capital we get an in- 
teresting light on the old Greek legends of the Minotaur and 

1 It is interesting to note that the earliest empires, Assyria and Egypt, 
were not naval powers, because they arose in rich river valleys abun- 
dantly capable of sustaining their inhabitants. They did not need to 
command the sea. 

15 . 



16 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



the Labyrinth, going back to the time when the island kingdom 
levied tribute, human as well as monetary, on its subject cities 
throughout the ^Egean. 

On this sea power Crete reared an astonishingly advanced 
civilization. Until recent times, for instance, the Phoenicians 
had been credited with the invention of the alphabet. We 
know now that iooo years before the Phoenicians began to 
write the Cretans had evolved a system of written char- 
acters — as yet undeciphered — and a decimal system for num- 
bers. A correspondingly high stage of excellence had been 




From Torr, Ancient Ships. 



EGYPTIAN SHIP 



reached in engineering, architecture, and the fine arts, and 
even in decay Crete left to Greece the tradition of mastery 
in laws and government. 

The power of Crete was already in its decline centuries be- 
fore the Trojan War, but during a thousand years it had 
spread its own and Egyptian culture over the shores of the 
yEgean. The destruction of the island empire in about 1400 
B.C. apparently was due to some great disaster that destroyed 
her fleet and left her open to invasion by a conquering race — 
probably the Greeks — who ravaged her cities by sword and 
fire. On account of her commanding position in the Mediter- 
ranean, Crete might again have risen to sea power but for the 
endless civil wars that marked her subsequent history. 

The successor to Crete as mistress of the sea was Phoenicia. 
The Phoenicians, oddly enough, were a Semitic people, a 



THE BEGINNINGS OF NAVIES 17 

nomadic race with no traditions of the sea whatever. When, 
however, they migrated to the coast and settled, they found 
themselves in a narrow strip of coast between a range of 
mountains and the sea. The city of Tyre itself was erected 
on an island. Consequently these descendants of herdsmen 
were compelled to find their livelihood upon the sea — as 
were the Venetians and the Dutch in later ages — and for 
several hundred years they maintained their control of the 
ocean highways. 

The Phoenicians were not literary, scientific, or artistic; 
they were commercial. Everything they did was with an 
eye to business. They explored the Mediterranean and be- 
yond for the sake of tapping new sources of wealth, they 
planted colonies for the sake of having trading posts on their 
routes, and they developed fighting ships for the sake of pre- 
serving their trade monopolies. Moreover, Phoenicia lay at the 
end of the Asiatic caravan routes. Hence Phoenician ships re- 
ceived the wealth of the Nile valley and Mesopotamia and 
distributed it along the shores of the Mediterranean. 
Phoenician ships also uncovered the wealth of Spain and 
the North African coast, and, venturing into the Atlantic, 
drew metals from the British Isles. According to Herodotus, 
a Phoenician squadron circumnavigated Africa at the begin- 
ning of the seventh century before Christ, completing the 
voyage in three years. We should know far more now of 
the extent of the explorations made by these master mariners 
of antiquity were it not for the fact that they kept their 
trade routes secret as far as possible in order to preserve their 
trade monopoly. 

In developing and organizing these trade routes the Phoeni- 
cians planted colonies on the islands of the Mediterranean, — 
Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and Malta. They held both shores 
of the Straits of Gibraltar, and on the Atlantic shores of 
Spain established posts at Cadiz and Tarshish, the latter com- 
monly supposed to have been situated just north of Cadiz at 
the mouth of the Guadalquivir River. Cadiz was their dis- 
tributing point for the metals of northern Spain and the 
British Isles. The most famous colony was Carthage, situ- 



18 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



ated near the present city of Tunis. Carthage was founded 
during the first half of the ninth century before Christ, and on 
the decay of the parent state became in turn mistress of the 
western Mediterranean, holding sway until crushed by Rome 
in the Punic Wars. 

Of the methods of the Phoenicians and their colonists in 
establishing trade with primitive peoples, we get an interesting 
picture from Herodotus, 1 who describes how the Cartha- 
ginians conducted business with barbarous tribes on the north- 
ern coast of Africa. 




MEDITERRANEAN SEA 



«*!! 





o m 



■■.■:■■■.■■■■'■ . . ■ " ■■<: 



SCENE OF ANCIENT SEA POWER 



"When they (the Carthaginian traders) arrive, forthwith 
they unload their wares, and having disposed them in orderly 
fashion on the beach, leave them, and returning aboard their 
ships, raise a great smoke. The natives, when they see the 
smoke, come down to the shore, and laying out to view so 
much gold as they think the wares to be worth, withdraw to a 
distance. The Carthaginians upon this come ashore and look. 
If they think the gold enough, they take it up and go their 
way; but if it does not seem sufficient they go aboard their 
ships once more and wait patiently. Then the others approach 
and add to the gold till the Carthaginians are satisfied. Neither 
party deals unfairly with the other; for the Carthaginians 

1 History, translated by Geo. Rawlinson, vol. Ill, p. 144. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF NAVIES 19 

never touch the gold till it comes up to the estimated value of 
their goods, nor do the natives ever carry off the goods till 
the gold has been taken away." 

In addition to the enormous profits of the carrying trade 
the Phoenicians had a practical monopoly of the famous 
"Tyrian dyes," which were in great demand throughout the 
known world. These dyes were obtained from two kinds 
of shellfish together with an alkali prepared from seaweed. 
Phoenicians were also pioneers in the art of making glass. 
It is not hard to understand, therefore, how Phoenicia grew so 
extraordinarily rich as to rouse the envy of neighboring 
rulers, and to maintain themselves the traders of Tyre and 
Sidon had to develop fighting fleets as well as trading fleets. 

Early in Egyptian history the distinction was made between 
the "round" ships of commerce and the "long" ships of war 
The round ship, as the name suggests, was built for cargo 
capacity rather than for speed. It depended on sail, with the 
oars as auxiliaries. The long ship was designed for speed, 
depending on oars and using sail only as auxiliary. And 
while the round ship was of deep draft and rode to anchor, 
the shallow flat-bottomed long ships were drawn up on shore. 
The Phoenicians took the Egyptian and Cretan models and 
improved them. They lowered the bows of the fighting ships, 
added to the blunt ram a beak near the water's edge, and 
strung the shields of the fighting men along the bulwarks 
to protect the rowers. To increase the driving force and 
the speed, they added a second and then a third bank of oars, 
thus producing the "bireme" and the "trireme." These were 
the types they handed down to the Greeks, and in fact there 
was little advance made beyond the Phoenician war galley dur- 
ing all the subsequent centuries of the Age of the Oar. 

About the beginning of the seventh century before Christ 
the Phoenicians had reached the summit of their power on 
the seas. Their extraordinary wealth tempted the king of 
Assyria, in 725 B.C., to cross the mountain barrier with a 
great army. He had no difficulty in overrunning the country, 
but the inhabitants fled to their colonies. The great city of 



20 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

Tyre, being on an island, defied the invader, and finally the 
Assyrian king gave up and withdrew to his own country. 
Having realized at great cost that he could not subdue the 
Phoenicians without a navy, he set about finding one. By 
means of bribes and threats he managed to seduce three 
Phoenician cities to his side. These .furnished him sixty 
ships officered by Phoenicians, but manned by Assyrian crews. 

With this fleet an attack was made on Tyre, but such was 
the contempt felt by the Tyrians for their enemy that they 
held only twelve ships for defense. These twelve went out 
against the sixty, utterly routed them, and took 500 prisoners. 
For five years longer the Assyrian king maintained a siege 
of Tyre from the mainland, attempting to keep the city from 
its source of fresh water, but as the Tyrians had free com- 
mand of the sea, they had no difficulty in getting supplies of 
all kinds from their colonies. At the end of five years the 
Assyrians again returned home, defeated by the Phoenician 
control of the sea. When, twenty years later, Phoenicia was 
subjugated by Assyria, it was due to the lack of union among 
the scattered cities and colonies of the great sea empire. 
Widely separated, governed by their own princes, the indi- 
vidual colonies' had too little sense of loyalty for the mother 
country. Each had its own fleets and its own interests; in 
consequence an Assyrian fleet was able to destroy the Phoeni- 
cian fleets in detail. From this point till the rise of Athens 
as a sea power, the fleets of Phoenicia still controlled the 
sea, but they served the plans of conquest of alien rulers. 

As a dependency of Persia, Phoenicia enabled Cambyses to 
conquer Egypt. However, when the Phoenician fleet was 
ordered to subjugate Carthage, already a strong power in the 
west, the Phoenicians refused on the ground of the kinship 
between Carthage and Phoenicia. And the help of Phoenicia 
was so essential to the Persian monarch that he counter- 
manded the order. Indeed the relation of Phoenicia to Persia 
amounted to something more nearly like that of an ally than 
a conquered province, for it was to the interests of Persia 
to keep the Phoenicians happy and loyal. * 

When, in 498 B.C., the Greeks of Asia and the neighboring 



THE BEGINNINGS OF NAVIES 21 

islands revolted, it was due chiefly to the loyalty of the 
Phoenicians that the Persian empire was saved. Thereafter, 
the Persian yoke was fastened on the Asiatic Greeks, and 
any prospect of a Greek civilization developing on the eastern 
shore of the ^Egean was destroyed. 

But on the western shore lay flourishing Greek cities still 
independent of Persian rule. Moreover, the coastal towns 
like Corinth and Athens were developing considerable power 
on the sea, and it was evident that unless European Greece 




From Torr, Ancient Ships. 



GREEK WAR GAIXEY 



were subdued it would stand as a barrier between Persia and 
the western Mediterranean. Darius perceived the situation 
and prepared to destroy these Greek states before they should 
become too formidable. The story of this effort, ending at 
Salamis and Platea, and breaking for all time the power of 
Persia, belongs in the subsequent chapter that narrates the 
rise and fall of Athens as a sea power. 

At this point, it is worth pausing to consider in detail the 
war galley which the Phoenicians had developed and which 
they handed down to the Greeks at this turning point in the 
world's history. The bireme and the trireme were adopted 



22 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



by the Greeks, apparently without alteration, save that at 
Salamis the Greek galleys were said to have been more strong- 
ly built and to have presented a lower freeboard than those 
of the Phoenicians. A hundred years later, about 330 B.C., 
the Greeks developed the four-banked ship, and Alexander 
of Macedon is said to have maintained on the Euphrates a 
squadron of seven-banked ships. In the following century 
the Macedonians had ships of sixteen banks of oars, and 




From Torr, Ancient Ships. 



GREEK MERCHANT SHIP 



this was probably the limit for sea-going ships in antiquity. 
These multiple banked ships must have been most unhandy, 
for a reversal of policy set in till about the beginning of the 
Christian era the Romans had gone back to two-banked 
ships. In medieval times war galleys reverted to a single row 
of oars on each side, but required four or five men to every 
oar. 

At the time of the Persian war the trireme was the 
standard type of warship, as it had been for the hundred 
years before, and continued to be during the hundred years 



THE BEGINNINGS OF NAVIES 23 

that followed. In fact, the name trireme was used loosely 
for all ships of war whether they had two banks of oars or 
three. But the fleets that fought in the Persian war and in 
the Peloponnesian war were composed of three-banked ships, 
and fortunately we have in the records of the Athenian dock- 
yards accurate information as to structural detail. 

The Athenian trireme was about 150 feet in length, with 
a beam of 20 feet. The beam was therefore only 2/15 of 
the length. (A merchant ship of the same period was about 
180 feet long with a beam of % its length.) The trireme 
was fitted with one mast and square sail, the latter being 
used only when the wind was fair, as auxiliary to the oars, 
especially when it needed to retire from battle. In fact, the 
phrase "hoist the sail" came to be used colloquially like our 
"turn tail" as a term for running away. 

The triremes carried two sails, usually made of linen, a 
larger one used in cruising and a smaller one for emergency 
in battle. Before action it was customary to stow the larger 
sail on shore, and the mast itself was lowered to prevent its 
snapping under the shock of ramming. 

The forward part of the trireme was constructed with a 
view to effectiveness in ramming. Massive catheads projected 
far enough to rip away the upper works of an enemy, while the 
bronze beak at the waterline drove into her hull. This beak, 
or ram, was constructed of a core of timber heavily sheathed 
with bronze, presenting three teeth. Although the ram was 1 
the prime weapon of the ship, it often became so badly 
wrenched in collision as to start the whole forward part of 
the vessel leaking. 

The rowers were seated on benches fitted into a rectangular 
structure inside the hull. These benches were so compactly 
adjusted that the naval architects allowed only two feet of 
freeboard for every bank of oars. Thus the Roman quin- 
quiremes of the Punic wars stood only about ten feet above 
water. The covering of this rectangular structure formed a 
sort of hurricane deck, standing about three feet above the 
gangway that ran around the ship at about the level of the 
bulwarks. This gangway and upper deck formed the plat- 



24 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

form for the fighting men in battle. Sometimes the open 
space between the hurricane deck and the gangway was fenced 
in with shields or screens to protect the rowers of the upper- 
most bank of oars from the arrows and javelins of the enemy. 

The complement of a trireme amounted to about 200 men. 
The captain, or "trierarch," commanded implicit obedience. 
Under him was a sailing master, various petty officers, sailors, 
soldiers or marines, and oarsmen. 

The trireme expanded in later centuries to the quinquereme : 
upper works were added and a second mast, but in essentials 
it was the same type of war vessel that dominated the Medi- 
terranean for three thousand years — an oar driven craft that 
attempted to disable its enemy by ramming or breaking away 
the oars. After contact the fighting was of a hand to hand 
character such as prevailed in battles on land. These char- 
acteristics were as true of the galley of Lepanto (1571 A.D.) 
as of the trireme of Salamis (480 B.C.). Of the three car- 
dinal virtues of the fighting ship, mobility, seaworthiness, and 
ability to keep the sea, or cruising radius, the oar-driven type 
possessed only the first. It was fast, it could hold position 
accurately, it could spin about almost on its own axis, but it 
was so frail that it had to run for shelter before a moderate 
wind and sea. In consequence naval operations were limited 
to the summer months. As to its cargo capacity, it was so 
small that it was unable to carry provisions to sustain its own 
crew for more than a few days. As a rule the trireme was 
beached at night, with the crew sleeping on shore, and as far as 
possible the meals were cooked and eaten on shore. In the 
battle of yEgospotami (405 B.C.), for example, the Spartans 
fell upon the Athenians when their ships were drawn up on 
the beach and the crews were cooking their dinner. Moreover, 
the factors of speed and distance were both limited by the 
physical fatigue of the oarsmen. In the language of to-day, 
therefore, the oar-driven man-of-war had a small "cruising 
radius." 

This dependence on the land and this sensitiveness to 
weather are important facts in ancient naval history. It is, 
fair to say that storms did far more to destroy fleets and naval 



THE BEGINNINGS OF NAVIES 25 

expeditions than battles during the entire age of the oar. 
The opposite extreme was reached in Nelson's day. His 
lumbering ships of the line made wretched speed and strag- 
gling formations, but they were able to weather a hurricane 
and to keep the sea for an indefinite length of time. 

As a final word on the beginnings of navies, emphasis 
should be laid on the enormous importance of these early 
mariners, such as the Cretans and the Phoenicians, as builders 
of civilization. The venturesome explorer who brought his 
ship into some uncharted port not only opened up a new 
source of wealth but also established a reciprocal relation 
that quickened civilization at both ends of his route. The 
cargo ships that left the Nile delta distributed the arts of 
Egypt as well as its wheat, and the richest civilization of 
the ancient world, that of Greece, rose on foundation stones 
brought from Egypt, Assyria, and Phoenicia. It may be said 
of Phoenicia herself that she built up her advanced culture 
on ideas borrowed almost wholly from her customers. But 
control of the seas for trade involved control of the seas for 
war, and behind the merchantman stood the trireme. It is 
significant and appropriate that a Phoenician coin that has 
come down to us bears the relief of a ship of war. 

In contrast with these early sea explorers and sea fighters 
stand the peoples of China and India. Having reached a 
high state of culture at an early period, they nevertheless, 
sought no contact'with the world outside and became stagnant 
for thousands of years. Indeed, among the Hindus the 
crossing of the sea was a crime to be expiated only by the 
most agonizing penance. Hence these peoples of Asia, the 
most numerous in the world, exercised no influence on the 
development of civilization compared with a mere handful 
of people in Crete or the island city of Tyre. And for the 
same reason China and India ceased to progress and became 
for centuries mere backwaters of history. 

It is worth noting also that the Mediterranean, leading west- 
wards from the early developed nations of Asia Minor and 
Egypt, opened a westward course to the advance of discovery 
and colonization, and this trend continued as the Pillars of 



26 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

Hercules led to the Atlantic and eventually to the new world. 
For every nation that bordered the Mediterranean illimitable 
highways opened out for expansion, provided it possessed the 
stamina and the skill to win them. And in those days they 
were practically the only highways. Frail as the early ships 
were and great as were the perils they had to face, communi- 
cations by water were for centuries faster and safer than 
communications by land. Hence civilization followed the 
path of the sea. Even in these early beginnings it is easy to 
see that sea-borne commerce leads to the founding of colonies, 
and the formation of an empire whose parts are linked to- 
gether by trade routes, and finally, that the preservation of 
such an empire depends on the naval control of sea. This 
was as true of Crete and Phoenicia as it was later true of 
Venice, Holland, and England. 

REFERENCES 

The Sea Kings of Crete, J. Baikie, 1910. 

Phoenicia, Story of the Nations Series, George Rawlinson, 1895. 

The Sailing Ship, E. Keble Chatterton, 1909. 

Ships and Ways of Other Days, E. Keble Chatterton, 1913. 

Ancient Ships, Cecil Torr, 1894. 

Archeologie Navale, Auguste Jal, 1840. 

The Prehistoric Naval Architecture of the North of Europe, 

G. H. Buhmer, in Report of the U. S. National Museum, 1893. 

This article contains a complete bibliography on the subject of 

ancient ships. 
Sea Power and Freedom (chap. 2), Gerard Fiennes, 1918. 



CHAPTER II 

ATHENS AS A SEA POWER 

I. THE PERSIAN WAR 

In determining to crush the independence of the Greek cities 
of the west, Darius was influenced not only by the desire to 
destroy a dangerous rival on the sea and an obstacle to further 
advances by the Persian empire, but also to tighten his hold 
on the Greek colonies of Asia Minor. Helped by the Phoeni- 
cian fleet and the treachery of the Lesbians and Samians, he 
had succeeded in putting down a formidable rebellion in 500 
B.C. In this rebellion the Asiatic Greeks had received help 
from their Athenian brethren on the other side of the ^Egean; 
indeed just so long as Greek independence flourished any- 
where there would always be the threat of revolt in the 
Greek colonies of Persia. Darius perceived rightly that the 
prestige and the future power of his empire depended on his 
conquering Greece. 

In 492 he dispatched Mardonius with an army of invasion 
to subdue Attica and Eretria, and at the same time sent forth 
a great fleet to conquer the independent island communities of 
the .ZEgean. Mardonius succeeded in overcoming the tribes 
of Thrace and Macedonia, but the fleet, after taking the island 
of Thasus, was struck by a storm that wrecked three hundred 
triremes with a loss of 20,000 lives. As the broken remnants 
of the fleet returned to Asia, leaving Mardonius with no sea 
communications, and harassed by increasing opposition, he 
was compelled to retreat also. In 490 Darius sent out an- 
other army under Mardonius, this time embarking it on a fleet 
of 600 triremes which succeeded in arriving safely at the 
coast of Attica in the bay of Marathon. While the army was 

27 



28 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

disembarking it was attacked by Miltiades and utterly de- 
feated. The second expedition, therefore, came to nothing. 
But Marathon can hardly be called a decisive battle because it 
merely postponed the invasion; it affected in no way the 
communications of the Persians and it did not weaken seri- 
ously their military resources. 

The great savior of Greece at this crisis was the Athenian, 
Themistocles. He foresaw the renewed efforts of the Persian 
king to destroy Greece, and realized also that the most vital 
point in the coming conflict would be the control of the sea. 
Accordingly he urged upon the Athenians the necessity of 
building a powerful fleet. In this policy he was aided by 
one of those futile wars so characteristic of Greek history, a 
war between Athens and the island of yEgina. In order to 
overcome the ^Eginetans, who had a large fleet, the Athenians 
were compelled to build a larger one, and by the time this 
purpose was accomplished rumors came that the Persian king 
was getting ready another invasion of Greece. 

Campaign of Salamis:- 

The third attempt was undertaken ten years after the sec- 
ond, in the year 480, under Xerxes, the successor to Darius. 
This time the very immensity of the forces employed was 
to overcome all opposition and all misfortunes. An army, 
variously estimated at from one to five million men, crossed 
the Hellespont on a bridge of -boats to invade the peninsula 
from the north, while a fleet of 1200 triremes was assembled 
to insure the command of the sea. 

Against the unlimited resources of the Persian empire and 
the unity of plan represented by Xerxes and his generals, the 
Greeks had little to offer. They possessed the two advan- 
tages of the defensive, knowledge of the terrain and interior 
lines, 1 but their resources were small and their spirit divided. 

1 " 'Interior Lines' conveys the meaning that from a central position 
one can assemble more rapidly on either of two opposite fronts than the 
enemy can, and therefore utilize force more effectively." Naval Strategy, 
A. T. Mahan, p. 32. 



ATHENS AS A SEA POWER 



29 



Greece in those days was, as was later said of Italy, "merely 
a geographical expression." The various cities were mutually 
jealous and hostile, and it took a great common danger to 
bring them even into a semblance of cooperation. Even during 
this desperate crisis the cities of western Greece, counting 
themselves reasonably safe from invasion, declined to send a 
ship or a man for the common cause. 

The Persian army advanced without opposition as far as 




ROUTE OF XERXES FLEET TO BATTLE OF SALAMIS 



the pass of Thermopylae, which guarded the only road into 
the rest of Greece. Twelve days after the army had started 
on its march the great fleet crossed the yEgean to establish 
contact with the army and bring supplies. The army was. 
checked by the valor of Leonidas, and the Persian fleet was 
intercepted by a Greek fleet which stood guard over the 
channel leading to the Gulf of Lamia, thus protecting the sea 
flank of Leonidas. The Persian fleet, after crossing the 
open sea safely, made its base at Sepias preparatory to the 
attack on the Greek fleet. The latter numbered only about 



30 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



380 vessels to some 1200 of their enemy and the prospects 
for the Persian cause looked bright indeed. But as the very 
number of the Persian ships made it impossible to beach all 
of them for the night a large proportion of them were 
anchored, lying in eight lines, prows toward the sea. At 
dawn a northeast gale fell upon them, and, according to the 
Greek accounts, wrecked 400 triremes, together with an un- 
counted number of transports. Meanwhile the Greek ships 
had taken refuge under the lee of the island of Eubcea, and 




GULF OF CORINTH 



SCENE OF PRELIMINARY NAVAL OPERATIONS, CAMPAIGN OF SALAMIS 

the news of the Persian disaster was signaled to them by 
the watchers on the heights. 

As soon as the weather moderated the Greeks returned to 
their position in the straits near Artemisium, and during 
the next three days the two fleets fought stubbornly but with- 
out advantage to either side. During the second day a 
southerly gale caught a flying squadron of some 200 triremes, 
that had been dispatched round the island of Eubcea to catch 
the Greeks in the rear, and not one of the Persian ships sur- 
vived. The Greek rear guard squadron of fifty brought the 
welcome news to the main fleet and served as a much needed 



ATHENS AS A SEA POWER 31 

reenforcement. Although the Persian armada had lost about 
half its force in three days by storms, the odds were still so 
heavily against the Greeks that they found themselves in 
constant peril of having their flanks turned in this open sea 
fighting. 

On the afternoon of the third day the pass of Thermopylae 
was forced, thanks to the treachery of a Greek and the con- 
temptible policy of the Spartan government which steadily 
refused the plea of Leonidas for reinforcements. With 
Thermopylae taken there was no further reason for the Greek 
fleet to try to hold the straits north of Eubcea, and during 
the night it retired unobserved. The following day the Per- 
sian fleet advanced and brought to the army the supplies 
which it sorely needed. 

With the fall of Thermopylae and the contact established 
between his army and his fleet, Xerxes found his route open 
for the invasion of Attica. Since* there was no possibility of 
opposing him on land, the population of the province was 
removed and Athens left to its fate. Themistocles, who was 
in command of the Athenian division of the Greek fleet, now 
urged the assembling of the fleet at Salamis, partly to cover 
the withdrawal of the Athenians and partly to assist in the 
defense of the Isthmus of Corinth, which was to be the next 
stand of the Greeks. The advice was adopted and the fleet 
assembled off the town of Salamis. Athenian refugees had 
crowded into the town and from the heights above they 
watched the smoke of their burning city. Their own future 
and the future of Athenian civilization hung on the long lines 
of triremes drawn up on the shore. 

A glance at the map of the region of Salamis shows the 
advantages offered by the position for the defensive. The 
fighting off Artemisium had shown the peril of attacking a 
greatly superior force in the open because of the danger of 
being outflanked. In the narrow straits between Salamis and 
the mainland the Greek line of battle would rest its flanks 
on the opposite shores. But it is one thing to choose a posi- 
tion and another to get the enemy to accept battle in that 
position. If the Persians ignored the Greek fleet and moved 



32 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

to the Isthmus, the Greeks would be caught in an awkward 
predicament. To regain touch with the Greek army, the 
fleet would be then compelled to come out of the straits and 
fight at a disadvantage in the open. There was only one 
chance of defeating the Persian fleet and that was to make it 
fight in the narrow waters of the strait where numbers would 
not count so heavily. Everything depended on bringing this 
to pass. 

Nor could the Greeks wait indefinitely for the Persians. 
Already the incorrigible jealousies of rival cities had almost 
reached the point of disintegrating the fleet. Although the 
commander in chief was the Spartan general Eurybiades, the 
whole Spartan contingent was on the point of deserting in 
a body to their own coasts. The situation was saved by 
Themistocles. Having wrung from his allies a reluctant 
consent to stop at Salamis temporarily to cover the with- 
drawal of the Athenian populace, the story is that he secretly 
dispatched a messenger to Xerxes to say that if he would 
attack at once he could crush the entire naval forces of the 
Greeks at a blow, but if he delayed the Greeks would scatter. 
Acting on this advice, Xerxes landed troops on the island of 
Psyttaleia, dispatched a squadron to block the western outlet 
of Salamis Straits, and proceeded to move the main body 
of his fleet to attack the Greeks by way of the eastern channel. 
The preparations were made during the night and were 
not completed till dawn of the day of battle, September 20, 
480 B.C. 

The debates in the allied fleet came to an end with the 
appearance of the Persians. The shrewd plan of Themisto- 
cles had succeeded. The Greeks would have to fight with 
their backs to the wall, but they would fight with better chance 
of success than under any other circumstances. 

The Greek force consisted of about 380 vessels. Of these, 
Athens contributed 180, Sparta and the rest of the Peloponne- 
sus were represented by 89 and the remainder were made up of 
squadrons from the island states. Some of these island con- 
tingents contained a type of ship different from the triremes, 
the penteconter. This was a galley with only one bank of 



ATHENS AS A SEA POWER 33 

oars, but these were long sweeps, each manned by five oars- 
men. The penteconter was an early prototype of the galley of 
the Christian era. 

The Persians had been reduced by this time to about 600 
ships, although there had been numerous reinforcements since 
the disaster at Cape Sepias. The fleet was "Persian" only 
in name, for, except for bands of Persian archers on some 
of the ships, it was composed of elements levied from each 
of the subject nations that followed the sea. Indeed Persia 
is a curious example in history of a nation with a purely 
artificial sea power, for its navy was composed of aliens en- 
tirely. Thus the squadron that was sent to blockade the 
western end of the straits was Egyptian, the right wing of 
the fleet as it advanced to the attack was composed of Phoeni- 
cians, and the center and left was made up of Cyprians, 
Cilicians, Samothracians, and Ionians, the latter only re- 
cently in rebellion against Persia and at that time welcoming 
help from Athens in a cause in which Athens herself was now 
involved. Apparently there was no compunction felt on this 
account, for the Ionians distinguished themselves by gallant 
fighting against their Greek brethren. Nevertheless, it is not 
hard to imagine difficulties involved in the task of making a 
unit of such an assortment of peoples. The fleet was com- 
manded by a Persian, Prince Ariabignes, brother of Xerxes. 

At daybreak the Persian triremes drew up in three lines 
on each side of the island of Psyttaleia and advanced into the 
straits. But the narrowing waters of the channel made it 
necessary to reduce the front and bear to the left. Conse- 
quently all formation was lost, and the Persian triremes 
poured into the narrows "in a stream," — to quote the phrase 
of the tragedian iEschylus, who fought on an Athenian tri- 
reme in this battle and describes it in one of his plays. 

Facing the invader was a smaller array of ships but a 
better ordered line of battle. On the Greek left was the 
Athenian division opposing the advancing triremes of Phoeni- 
cia; on the right was the Spartan division facing the Greeks 
of Asia Minor. The two fleets rushed toward each other, 
but just before contact the Persians found themselves em- 



34 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



barrassed by their very number of ships. As may be seen 
by the map, they had an awkward turn to make in entering 
the narrows. At this point, just opposite the peninsula of 
Salamis, the straits are only about 2000 yards wide, making 
it impossible for more than 80 or 90 triremes to advance 
abreast. As a result the Phoenician wing of the line was ex- 
tended considerably in advance of the rest, forced ahead by 




After Grundy, The Great Persian War. 

THE BATTLE OF SALAMIS, 480 B. C. 

1 The Original Position 

2 The Advance 

3 The Contact 

the pressure of ships behind. Although, as a matter of fact, 
the Spartan wing also was somewhat in advance of the rest 
of the Greek line, the first shock of battle came between the 
Phoenicians and the Athenians. 

This initial advantage offered by an exposed wing was im- 
mediately seized upon. While the Athenians bore the frontal 
attack, the iEginetans on their right fell upon the Phoenicians' 
flank. This double attack on the Persian right wing even- 
tually proved the turning point of the battle. The Phoeni- 
cians, however, had the reputation of being the foremost sea 



ATHENS AS A SEA POWER 35 

fighters in the world, and they bore themselves well. Simi- 
larly the Asiatic Greeks proved themselves foemen worthy 
of their brethren from the Peloponnesus, and the fight was 
maintained with great ferocity all along the line. The in- 
habitants of Athens who had been removed to Salamis black- 
ened the shores on one side of the Strait, as anxious watchers 
of the tremendous spectacle. Opposite them on the slope of 
Mt. iEgaleos sat Xerxes himself, surrounded by his staff, a 
less anxious spectator but no less interested in the outcome. 

About seven o'clock a fresh westerly wind arose, as it does 
at this day in that region, and as it did some years later during 
a battle won by an Athenian admiral in the Gulf of Corinth. 1 
This wind blows every morning with considerable violence 
for about two hours; and in this battle it must have tended 
to make the bows of the Persian ships pay off — thus exposing 
their sides to the Greek rams — and drift back upon the galleys 
that were crowding forward from the rear in the attempt to 
get into the battle. 

The Greeks pressed their advantage, using their rams to 
sink an adversary or disable her by cutting away her oars. 
Where the melee was too close for such tactics they tried to 
take their enemy by boarding. On every Greek trireme was 
a specially organized boarding party consisting of 36 men — 
18 marines, 14 heavily armed soldiers, and four bowmen; 
and the Greeks seem to have been superior to their enemy 
at close quarters. On the Persian side the superiority lay 
in their archers and javelin throwers. Toward the end of 
the battle, for instance, a Samothracian trireme performed a 
remarkable feat. Having been disabled by an /Eginetan ship, 
the Samothracian cleared the decks of her assailant with 
arrows and javelins and took possession. Although the in- 
vaders seem to have fought with the greatest courage and 
determination, the disadvantage of confusion at the outset of 
the battle, augmented by the head wind, told decisively against 
them. They were unable to take advantage of their superi- 
ority in ships on account of the narrowness of the channel, 

1 The Battle of the Corinthian Gulf : v. p. 43 



36 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

and indeed found that the very multitude of their ships only 
added to their difficulties. 

The retreat began with the flower of the Persian fleet, the 
Phoenician division. Caught at the opening of the battle with 
the Athenians in front and the ^Eginetans on the left flank, 
they were never able to extricate themselves, although they 
fought stubbornly. The foremost ships, many in a disabled 
condition, began to retreat ; others backed water to make way 
for them; the rearmost finding it impossible to reach the 
battle at all, withdrew out of the straits ; and soon the retreat 
became general. As the Phoenicians withdrew, the Athenians 
and the yEginetans fell upon the center of the Persian line, and 
the rout became general with the Greeks in full pursuit. The 
latter pressed their enemy as far as the island of Psyttaleia, 
thus cutting off the Persian force on the island from their com- 
munications. Whereupon Aristides, the Athenian, led a force 
in boats from Salamis to the island and put to death every man 
of the Persian garrison. The Persian ships fled to their base 
at Phaleron, while the Greeks returned to their base at Salamis. 

The battle of Salamis was won, but at the moment neither 
side realized its decisive character. The Greeks had lost 
40 ships; the Persians had lost over 200 sunk, and an inde- 
terminate number captured. Nevertheless, the latter could 
probably have mustered a considerable force for another 
attack — which the Greeks expected — if their morale had not 
been so badly shaken. Their commander, Ariabignes, was 
among the killed, and there was no one else capable of reor- 
ganizing the shattered forces. Xerxes, fearing for the safety 
of his bridge over the Hellespont, gave orders for his ships 
to retire thither to protect it, and the very night after the 
battle found the remains of the Persian fleet in full flight 
across the .ZEgean. 

The news reached the Greeks at noon of the following day 
and they set out in pursuit, but having gone as far as Andros 
without coming up with the enemy, they paused for a council 
of war. The Athenians urged the policy of going on and 
destroying the bridge over the Hellespont, but they were 



ATHENS AS A SEA POWER 37 

voted down by their allies, who preferred to leave well enough 1 
alone. 

It is customary to speak of the victory of the Greeks at 
Salamis as due to their superior physique and fighting quali- 
ties. This superiority may be claimed for the Greek soldiers 
at Marathon and Platsea, where the Persian army was actu- 
ally Persian. The Asiatic soldier, forced into service and, 
flogged into battle, was indeed no match for the virile and 
warlike Greek. But at Salamis it was literally a case of 
Greek meeting Greek, except in the case of the Phoenicians — 
who had the reputation of being the finest seafighters in the 
world — and it is not easy to see how the battle was won by 
sheer physical prowess. There is no evidence to show any 
lack of either courage' or fighting ability on the Persian side. 
The decisive feature of the battle was the fatal exposure of 
the Phoenician wing at the very outset. However, it is worth 
noting that the invaders had been maneuvering all night and 
were tired — especially the oarsmen — when called upon to 
enter battle against an enemy that was fresh. In that respect 
there was undoubtedly some advantage to the Greeks, but it 
can hardly have been of prime importance. 

The immediate results of the victory at Salamis were soon 
apparent. The all-conquering Persian army suddenly found 
itself in a critical situation. Cut off from its supplies by sea, 
it had to retreat or starve, for the country which it occupied 
was incapable of furnishing supplies for a host so enormous. 
Xerxes left an army of occupation in Thessaly consisting of 
300,000 men under Mardonius, but the rest were ordered to 
get back to Persia as best they could. A panic-stricken rout 
to the Hellespont began, and for the next forty-five days a 
great host, that had never been even opposed in battle, went to 
pieces under famine, disease, and the guerilla warfare of the 
inhabitants of the country it traversed, and it was only a 
broken and demoralized remnant of the great army that sur- 
vived to see the Hellespont. This great military disaster was 
due entirely to the fact that Salamis had deprived Xerxes of 
the command of the sea. Indeed, if the advice of Themisto- 
cles had been taken and the Greek fleet had proceeded to the 



38 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

Hellespont and held the position, not even a remnant of the 
retreating army would have survived. It happened that the 
bridge had been carried away by storms and the army had 
to be ferried over by the ships of the beaten and demoralized 
Persian fleet, an operation which would have been impossible 
in the face of the victorious Greeks. 

Xerxes still held to the idea of conquering Greece; but the 
chance was gone. Mardonius, it is true, remained in Thes- 
saly with an army, but it was no longer an army of millions. 
The Greeks assembled an army of about 100,000 men and 
in the battle of Platasa the following year utterly defeated 
it. On the same day the Greeks destroyed what was left of 
the Persian fleet in the battle of Mycale, on the coast of Asia 
Minor. This, strictly speaking, was not a naval battle at all, 
for the Persians had drawn their ships up on shore and 
built a stockade around them. The Greeks landed their crews, 
took the stockade by storm and burnt the ships. These later 
victories were the direct consequences of the earlier victory of 
Salamis. 

Another phase of the Persian plan of conquering the Greeks 
must not be overlooked. Xerxes had stirred up Carthage to 
undertake a naval and military expedition against the Greeks 
of Sicily, in order that all the independent Greek states might 
be crushed simultaneously. Again the weather came to f the 
rescue, for the greater part of the Carthaginian fleet was 
wrecked by storms. The survivors of the expedition laid 
siege to the city of Himera, but were eventually driven back 
to their ships in rout with the loss of their general. Thus 
the Greek civilization of Sicily was saved at the same time 
as that of Athens. 

East and west, therefore, the grandiose plan of the Persian 
despot fell in ruin, and with it fell the prestige and the power 
of the empire. The Ionians revolted and joined Athens as 
allies, and the control of the ^Egean passed from Persia to 
Athens. With this loss of sea power began the decline of 
Persia as a world power. 

- The significance of this astounding defeat of the greatest 
military and naval power of the time lies in the fact that 



ATHENS AS A SEA POWER 39 

European, or more particularly Greek, civilization was spared 
to develop its own individuality. Had Xerxes succeeded, the 
paralyzing regime of an Asiatic despotism would have stifled 
the genius of the Greek people. Self-government would never 
have had its beginnings in Greece, and a subjugated Athens 
would never have produced the "Age of Pericles." In the 
two generations following Salamis, Athens made a greater 
original contribution to literature, philosophy, science, and art 
than any other nation in any two centuries of its existence. 
For the fact that this priceless heritage was left to later 
ages the world is indebted chiefly to the Greeks who fought 
at Salamis. The night before that battle the cause of Greece 
seemed doomed beyond hope. The day after, the invaders 
began a retreat that ended forever their hopes of conquest. 
This amazing change of fortune was due to the fact that 
the success of the Persian invasion depended on the control 
of the sea. Hence the Greeks, though unable to muster an 
army large enough to meet the Persian host on land, defeated 
it disastrously by winning a victory on the sea. 

2. THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR 

After Salamis, Athens rose to a commanding position 
among the Greek states. Her period of supremacy was brief, 
lasting less than 75 years, but while it endured it rested on 
her triremes. In the middle of the fifth century she had 
100,000 men in her navy, practically as many as Great Britain 
in her fleet before 19 14. Although the period of Athenian 
supremacy was short-lived, it is interesting because it pro- 
duced a great naval genius, Phormio, and because it wrecked 
itself as Persian sea power had done, in an attempt at foreign 
conquest. 

Scarcely had the Persian invasion come to an end when 
bickering broke out among the various Greek states, much 
of it directed against Athens. She had small difficulty, how- 
ever, in maintaining her ascendancy in northern Greece on 
account of her superiority on the sea, and it was during the 
half century after Salamis that Athens arose to her splendid 



40 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



climax as the intellectual and aristic center of the world. 
In 43 1 began the Peloponnesian War. Its immediate cause 
was the help given by Athens to Corcyra (Corfu) in a war 
against Corinth. Corinth called on Sparta for help, and in 
consequence northern and southern Greece were locked in 
a mortal struggle. The Athenians had a naval base at 
Naupaktis on the Gulf of Corinth, and in 429, two years after 




After Shepherd's Historical Atlas. 
THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT — ABOUT 450 B.C. 



war broke out, the Athenian Phormio found himself sup- 
plied with only twenty triremes with which to maintain con- 
trol of that important waterway. At the same time Sparta 
was setting in motion a large land and water expedition with 
the object of sweeping Athenian influence from all of western 
Greece and of obtaining control of the Gulf of Corinth. A 
fleet from Corinth was to join another at Leukas, one of the 
Ionian Islands, and then proceed to operate on the northern 
coast of the gulf while an army invaded the province. 

As it happened, the army moved off without waiting for 



ATHENS AS A SEA POWER 41 

the cooperation of the fleet and eventually went to pieces in 
an ineffectual siege of an inland city. When the fleet started 
out from Corinth it numbered 47 triremes. As this was more 
than twice the number possessed by Phormio, the Corinthian 
admiral evidently counted on being secure from attack. Ac- 
cordingly he used some of his triremes as transports and 
started on his journey without taking the precaution to train 
his oarsmen or practice maneuvers. But as he skirted along 
the southern coast he was surprised to see the Athenian ships 
moving in a parallel course as if on the alert for an oppor- 




SCENE OF PHORMIO S CAMPAIGNS 



tunity to attack. When the Corinthian ships bore up from 
Patrae to cross to the yEtolian shore, the Athenian column 
steered directly toward them. At this threat the Corinthian 
fleet turned away and put in at Rhium, a point near the nar- 
rowest part of the strait, in order to make the crossing under 
cover of night. The Corinthian admiral made the same fatal 
mistake committed by the commander of the Spanish Armada 
2000 years later in a similar undertaking, that of trying to 
avoid an enemy on the sea rather than fight him before carry- 
ing out an invasion of the enemy's coast. This ignominious 
conduct on the part of the Corinthian admiral was partly due 
to the fact that he was encumbered with his transports, but 
chiefly to the fact that he knew that in fighting qualities his 



42 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



men were no match for the Athenians. The latter had no 
peers on the sea at that time. Since Salamis they had pro- 
gressed far in naval science and efficiency and were filled 
with the confidence that comes from knowledge and experi- 
ence. 

All night Phormio watched his enemy and at dawn sur- 
prised him in mid-crossing. On seeing Phormio advance to 
the attack, the Corinthian drew up his squadron in a defensive 



'^Wl 






\ 



*?. 



52» 






fi^ 



^ 



I 







^ 



(Hn^ 



CSCOeiNTHIANS 
«»AfN£lVlANS 



BATTLE OF THE CORINTHIAN GULF, 429 B. C. 
Corinthian Formation and Circling Tactics of Phormio. 

position, ranging his vessels in concentric circles, bows out- 
ward, like the spokes of a wheel. In the center of this 
formation he placed his transports, together with five of his 
largest triremes to assist at any threatened spot. The forma- 
tion suggests a leader of infantry rather than an admiral; 
moreover, it revealed a fatal readiness to give up the offensive 
to an enemy force less than half his own. 

At any rate there was no lack of decision on the part of 
Phormio. He advanced rapidly in line ahead formation, 
closed in near the enemy's prows as if he intended to strike 
at any moment and circled round the line. The Corinthian 



ATHENS AS A SEA POWER 43 

triremes, having no headway and manned by inexperienced 
rowers, began crowding back on one another as they tried to 
keep in position for the expected attack. Then the same early 
morning wind that had embarrassed the Persian ships at 
Salamis sprang up and added to the confusion of fouling 
ships and clashing oar blades. Choosing his opening, 
Phormio flew the signal for attack and rammed one of the 
flagships of the Corinthian fleet. The Athenians fell upon 
their enemy and almost at the first blow routed the entire 
Corinthian force. In addition to those triremes that were 
sunk outright, twelve remained as prizes with their full com- 
plement of crews, and the rest scattered in flight. Phormio 
returned in triumph to Naupaktis with the loss of scarcely a 
man. 

So humiliating a defeat had to be avenged, and Sparta 
organized a new expedition. This time a fleet of JJ triremes 
was collected. Meanwhile Phormio had sent to Athens the 
news of his victory together with an urgent plea for rein- 
forcements. Unfortunately the great Pericles was dying and 
the government had fallen into weak and unscrupulous hands. 
Consequently while 20 triremes were ordered to< the support 
of Phormio, political intrigue succeeded in diverting this 
squadron to carry out a futile expedition to Crete, and 
Phormio was left to contest the control of the gulf against 
a fleet of JJ with nothing more than his original twenty. 

It is interesting to observe what strategy Phormio adopted 
in this difficult situation. In the campaign of Salamis, 
Themistocles chose the narrow waters of the strait as the 
safest position for a fleet outnumbered by the enemy, because 
of the protection offered to the flanks by the opposite shores. 
But Phormio, commanding a fleet less than one-fourth that of 
his adversary, chose the open sea. Apparently his decision 
was based on the fact that the superiority of the Athenian 
ship lay in its greater speed and skill in maneuvering. Un- 
able to cope with his adversary in full force, he might by his 
superior mobility beat him in detail. Accordingly, he boldly 
took the open sea. 

For about a week the two fleets lay within sight of each 



44 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

other, with Phormio trying to draw his enemy out of the 
narrows into open water and his adversary attempting to 
crowd him into a corner against the shore. Finally the Pelo- 
ponnesian, realizing that Phormio would have to defend his 
base, and hoping to force him to fight at a disadvantage, 
moved upon Naupaktis. As this port was undefended, 
Phormio was compelled to return thither. 

The Peloponnesian fleet advanced in line of four abreast 
with the Spartan admiral and the twenty Spartan triremes — 
the best in the fleet — in the lead. At the signal from the 
admiral the column swung "left into line" and bore down in 
line abreast upon the Athenians who were ranging along the 
shore in line ahead. The object of the maneuver was to cut 
the Athenians off from the port and crowd them upon the 
shore. The latter, however, developed such a burst of speed 
that eleven of the twenty succeeded in reaching Naupaktis ; 
the remaining nine drove ashore and their crews escaped. 
Apparently the victory of the Spartan was as complete as it 
was easy. But while the rest of the fleet busied itself with 
the deserted Athenian triremes on the shore, the Spartan 
squadron continued in the pursuit of the eleven Athenian 
ships that were heading for Naupaktis. Ten of the eleven 
reached port and drew up in a position of defense. The 
eleventh, less speedy than the rest, was being overhauled by 
the Spartan flagship which was pushing the pursuit far in 
advance of the rest of the squadron. The captain of the 
Athenian ship, seeing this situation, determined on a bold 
stroke. Instead of pushing on into the harbor he pulled 
round a merchant ship that lay anchored at the mouth, and 
rammed his pursuer amidships, disabling her at a blow. The 
Spartan admiral promptly killed himself and the rest of the 
ship's company were too panic stricken to resist. 

At this disaster the rest of the Spartan squadron hesitated, 
dropped oars or ran into shallow water. Seeing his oppor- 
tunity, Phormio dashed out of the harbor with his ten tri- 
remes and fell upon the Spartans. In spite of the ridiculous 
disparity of forces, this handful of Athenian ships pressed 
their attack so gallantly that they destroyed the Spartan ad- 



ATHENS AS A SEA POWER 45 

vance wing and then, catching the rest of the fleet in disorder, 
routed the main body as well. By nightfall Phormio had 
rescued eight of the nine Athenian triremes that had fallen 
into the hands of the enemy and sent the scattered remnants 
of the Peloponnesian fleet in full flight towards Corinth. 
This battle of Naupaktis remains one of the most brilliant 
naval victories in history, a victory won against overwhelming 
odds by quick decision and superb audacity. 

Only a half century separates Salamis from the battle of 
the Corinthian Gulf and the battle of Naupaktis, but during 
that period there had been a great advance in naval science. 

As far as naval tactics are concerned, Salamis was merely 
a fight between two mobs of ships, except that when oppor- 
tunity offered, a vessel used her ram. Otherwise the only 
difference from land fighting was the fact that the combatants 
stood on floating platforms. But in the Peloponnesian war we 
see not only the birth of naval tactics but a very high develop- 
ment, especially as revealed in these two victories of Phormio. 

With the development of a naval science rose also a naval 
profession. At Salamis Themistocles was a politician and 
Eurybiades was a soldier; it happened that they were made 
fleet commanders for the emergency. Phormio was naval 
officer by profession, and he won by genius combined with 
superior efficiency in the personnel under his command. In 
his courage, resourcefulness, in the spirit he inspired, and 
the high pitch of skill he developed among his officers and 
men, he is an ideal type for every later age. Little is known 
of his life and character beyond the story of these two ex- 
ploits, but they are sufficient to give him the name of the first 
great admiral of history. 

His exploits illustrate, too, at the very outset of naval his- 
tory, the vital truth that the man counts more than the ma- 
chine. In these later days, when the tendency is to measure 
naval power merely by counting dreadnoughts, and to settle 
all hypothetical combats by the proportion of strength at a 
given point on the game board, it is well to remember that 
the most overwhelming victories have been won by the skill 



46 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

and audacity of a great leader, which overcame odds that 
would be reckoned by the experts as insuperable. 

The Peloponnesian war dragged on with varying fortunes 
for ten years. The Athenians were regularly successful on 
the sea and unsuccessful on land. They seem to have laid 
an unwise dependence on their navy for a state situated on 
the mainland with land communications open to the enemy. 
They attempted to make an island of their state by withdraw- 
ing into the city of Athens the entire population of Attica, 
leaving open to the invader the rest of the province. The 
repeated ravaging of Attica by Peloponnesian armies weak- 
ened both the resources and the morale of the Athenians, and 
the crowding of the inhabitants into the city resulted in 
frightful mortality from the plague. At the same time the 
naval expeditions sent out to harry the coast of the Pelopon- 
nesus accomplished nothing of real advantage. 

In 421 a truce was agreed upon between Athens and Sparta, 
which was to last fifty years. Both sides were sorely weak- 
ened by the protracted struggle and neither had gained any 
real advantage over the other. Without waiting to recuperate 
from the losses of the war, Athens embarked in 415 on an 
ambitious plan of conquering Syracuse, and gaining all of 
Sicily as an Athenian colony. In the event of success Athens 
would have a western outpost for the eventual control of the 
Mediterranean, as she already had an eastern outpost in 
Ionia, which gave her control of the ^Egean. 

In the light of the event it is customary to refer to this 
expedition as the climax of folly, and yet it is clear that if 
the commander in chief had not wasted time in interminable 
delays the Athenians might easily have won their objective. 
At first the Syracusans felt hopeless because of the large 
army and fleet dispatched against them, and the great naval 
prestige of their enemy, but as delay succeeded delay, as- 
sistance arrived from Corinth and Sparta, and the besieged 
citizens took heart. The siege dragged on for the greater 
part of two years, with the offensive gradually slipping from 
the Athenians to the Syracusans, till finally the invaders found 
their troops besieged on shore and their ships bottled up in 



ATHENS AS A SEA POWER 47 

the harbor by a line of galleys anchored across the entrance. 
The Syracusans knew that they were no match for the 
Athenians on the open sea, but with a fleet crowded into a 
harbor with no room for maneuvering, the problem was not 
essentially different from that of fighting on land. They built 
a fleet of ships with specially strengthened bows for ramming 
and erected catapults for throwing heavy stones on the decks 
of the enemy. Meanwhile, the Athenian ships had deteri- 
orated from lack of opportunity to refit and their crews had 
been heavily reduced by disease. In a pitched battle between 
the two fleets in the harbor, the Athenians were worsted. 
Shortly after as the Athenians were attempting to break 
through the barrier and escape, they were again attacked by 
the Syracusans. There was no room for maneuvering; the 
Athenian ships were jammed together in a mass in which all 
advantage of numbers was lost. Moreover, against the deadly 
rain of huge stones the Athenians had no defense whatever. 

The result was an overwhelming victory for the Syracusans. 
Out of no triremes the Athenians lost fifty. The besieging 
army went to pieces in attempting a retreat across the island, 
and the whole expedition came to a tragic end. This defeat 
of the Athenian fleet in the harbor of Syracuse was the ruin 
of Athens. When the news reached Greece, many of her 
dependencies revolted, the Peloponnesian war had broken out 
anew, and she had no strength left to hold her own. The 
deathblow was given when a Spartan admiral destroyed all 
that was left of the Athenian navy at yEgospotami in the 
year 405. Thereafter Athens was merely a conquered 
province, permitted to keep a fleet of only twelve ships, and 
watched by a garrison of Spartan soldiers in the citadel. 

The downfall of Athenian sea power at Syracuse may be 
compared with the downfall of Persian sea power at Salamis. 
Just as the latter prevented the spread of an Asiatic form of 
civilization in Europe and gave Greek civilization a chance to 
develop, so the former put an end to the extension of a strong 
Hellenic power in Italy and left opportunity for the rise of 
the civilization of Rome. 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



REFERENCES 

History of Greece, Ernst Curtius, 1874. 

History of Greece, George Grote, 1856. 

The Great Persian War, G. B. Grundy, 1901. 

History of the Persian Wars, Herodotus, ed. and transl. by Geo. 

Rawlinson, 1862. 
History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides, ed. and transl. 

by Jowett. 



CHAPTER III 
THE SEA.. POWER OF ROME 

I. THE PUNIC WARS 

When peoples have migrated in the past, they have fre- 
quently changed their habits to conform to new topographical 
surroundings. We have seen that the Phoenicians, originally 
a nomadic people, became a seafaring race because of the 
conditions of the country they settled in; and on the other 
hand, at a later period, the Vikings who overran Normandy 
or Britain forsook the sea and became farmers. The popular 
idea that a race follows the sea because of an "instinct in 
the blood of the race" has little to stand on. When, however, 
the colonists from Phoenicia settled Carthage and founded an 
empire, they continued the traditions of their ancestors and 
built up their power on a foundation of ships. This was due 
to the conditions — topographical and geographical — which 
surrounded them, and which were much like those of the 
mother country. Carthage possessed the finest harbor on 
the coast of Africa, situated in the middle of the Mediter- 
ranean, where all the trade routes crossed. To counteract 
these attractions of the sea there was nothing but the arid 
and mountainous character of the interior. It was inevitable, 
therefore, that the Carthaginians, like their ancestors, should 
build an empire of the sea. 

As early as the sixth century B.C. Carthage had established 
her power so securely in the western Mediterranean as to 
be able to set down definite limits beyond which Rome agreed 
not to go. Thus the opening sentence of a treaty between 
the two nations in 509 B.C. ran as follows: 

"Between the Romans and their allies and the Carthaginians 
and their allies there shall be peace and alliance upon the con- 

49 



50 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



ditions that neither the Romans nor their allies shall sail beyond 
the Fair Promontory 1 unless compelled by bad weather or an 
enemy; and in case they are forced beyond it they shall not 
be allowed to take or purchase anything except what is barely 
necessary for refitting their vessels or for sacrifice, and they 
shall depart within five days." 2 

A second and a third treaty emphasized even more strongly 
the Carthaginian dictatorship over the Mediterranean. 




SCENE OF THE PUNIC WARS 



It was inevitable, therefore, that as Rome expanded her 
interests should come in collision with those of Carthage. 
The immediate causes of the Punic wars are of no conse- 
quence for our purpose ; the two powers had rival interests in 
Sicily, and the clash of these brought on the war in the year 
264 B.C. There followed a mortal struggle between Rome 
and Carthage that extended through three distinct wars and 
a period of over a hundred years. 

When the two nations faced each other in arms, Carthage 

1 A cape on the African coast about due north from Carthage. 
1 General History, Polybius, Bk. Ill, chap. 3. 



THE SEA POWER OF ROME 51 

had the advantage of prestige and the greatest navy in the 
world. Her weaknesses lay in the strife of political factions 
and the mercenary character of her forces. Her officers were 
usually Carthaginians, but it was considered beneath the dig- 
nity of a Carthaginian to be a private. The rank and file, 
therefore, were either hired or pressed into service from the 
subject provinces. In the case of Xanthippus, who defeated 
Regulus in the first Punic war, even the commanding officer 
was a Spartan mercenary. These troops would do well so 
long as campaigns promised plunder but would become dis- 
affected if things went wrong. 

The Romans, on the other hand, had only a small navy 
and no naval experience ; their strength lay in their legionaries. 
And in further contrast with their enemy they had none but 
Romans in their forces, or allies who were proud of fighting 
on the side of Rome. Consequently they fought in the spirit 
of intense patriotism which could stand the moral strain of 
defeat and even disaster. On land there was no better fighter 
than the Roman soldier. At sea, however, all the advantage 
lay with the Carthaginian, and it soon became clear that if 
the Romans were to succeed they would have to learn to fight 
on water. 

For the first three years Carthaginian fleets raided the coasts 
of Sicily and Italy with impunity. Finally, in desperation, 
Rome set about the creation of a fleet, and the story is that a 
Carthaginian quinquereme that had been wrecked on the coast 
was taken as a model, and while the ships were building, row- 
ers were trained in rowing machines set up on shore. The 
first contact with the enemy was not encouraging. The new 
fleet, which was constructed in two months, consisted of ioo 
quinqueremes and 30 triremes. Seventeen of these while on 
a trial cruise were blockaded in the harbor of Messina by 
twenty Carthaginian ships, and the Roman commander was 
obliged to surrender after his crews had landed and escaped. 

The next encounter was a different story. The Romans, 
realizing their ignorance of naval tactics and their superiority 
in land fighting, determined to make the next naval battle as 
nearly as possible like an engagement of infantry. Accord- 



52 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

ingly the ships were fitted with boarding gangways with a 
huge hooked spike at the end, like the beak of a crow, which 
gave them their name, "corvi" or "crows." * 

Armed with this new device, the Consul Duilius took the 
Roman fleet to sea to meet an advancing Carthaginian fleet 
and encountered it off the port of Mylas (260 B.C.). The 
Carthaginians had such contempt for their enemy that they 
advanced in irregular order, permitting thirty of their ships 
to begin the battle unsupported by the rest of the fleet. One 
after the other the Carthaginian quinqueremes were grappled 
and stormed, for once the great corvus crashed down on a 
deck all the arts of seamanship were useless. Before the day 
was over the Carthaginians had lost 14 ships sunk and 31 
captured, a total of half their fleet, and the rest had fled in 
disorder towards Carthage. 

The unexpected had happened, as it so frequently does in 
history. The amateurs had beaten the professionals, not by 
trying to achieve the same efficiency but by inventing some- 
thing new that would make that efficiency useless. Thus, as 

1 The following is the description in Polybius of what they were like 
and how they were worked. 

"They [the Romans] erected on the prow of every vessel a round pil- 
lar of wood, of about twelve feet in height, and of three palms breadth 
in diameter, with a pulley at the top. To this pillar was fitted a kind of 
stage, eighteen feet in length and four feet broad, which was made 
ladder-wise, of strong timbers laid across, and cramped together with 
iron : the pillar being received into an oblong square, which was opened 
for that purpose, at the distance of six feet within the end of the stage. 
On either side of the stage lengthways was a parapet, which reached 
just above the knee. At the farthest end of this stage or ladder was a 
bar of iron, whose shape was somewhat like a pestle ; but it was sharp- 
ened at the bottom, or lower point; and on the top of it was a ring. 
The whole appearance of this machine very much resembled those that 
are used in grinding corn. To the ring just mentioned was fixed a r6pe, 
by which, with the help of the pulley that was at the top of the pillar, 
they hoisted up the machines, and, as the vessels of the enemy came near, 
let them fall upon them, sometimes on their prow, and sometimes on 
their sides, as occasion best served. As the machine fell, it struck into 
the decks of the enemy, and held them fast. In this situation, if the 
two vessels happened to lie side by side, the Romans leaped on board 
from all parts of- their ships at once. But in case that they were joined 
only by the prow, they then entered two and two along the machine ; the 
two foremost extending their bucklers right before^ them to ward off the 
strokes that were aimed against them in front ; while those that followed 
rested the boss of their bucklers upon the top of the parapet on either 
side, and thus covered both their flanks." General History, Book I. 



THE SEA POWER OF ROME 53 

we nave seen, the Syracusans, who were no match for the 
Athenians in the open sea, destroyed the sea power of Athens 
by bottling up her fleet in a harbor and bombarding it with 
catapults. It is an instance such as we shall see recurring 
throughout naval history, in which the power of a great fleet 
is largely or completely neutralized by a new idea or device in 
the hands of the nation with the smaller navy. 

The significance of Mylse lay in the fact that a new naval 
power had arisen, that henceforth Rome must be reckoned 
with on the sea. The victory served to encourage the Ro- 
mans to enlarge their navy, and with it to press the war into 
the enemy's territory. Soon after Mylae they gained pos- 
session of the greater part of Sicily, and in the year 256 they 
dispatched a fleet to carry the offensive into Africa. This 
Roman fleet of 330 ships met, just off Ecnomus, on the south- 
ern coast of Sicily, a Carthaginian fleet of 350, and a great 
battle took place, interesting for the grand scale on which it 
was fought and the tactics employed. 

The Romans, on seeing their enemy, assumed a formation 
hitherto unknown in tactics at sea. Their first and second 
squadrons formed the sides of an acute-angled triangle; the 
third squadron formed the base of the triangle, towing the 
transports, and the fourth squadron brought up the rear, cov- 
ering the transports. The whole formed a compact wedge, 
pushing forward like a great spear head to pierce the enemy's 
line. 

Admirable as this formation was, the Carthaginians were 
no less skillful in their tactics for destroying it. Instead of 
keeping an unbroken line to receive the attack, they stationed 
their left wing at some distance from the center so as to> over- 
lap the Roman right, and their right wing in column ahead, so 
as to overlap the Roman left. As the Romans advanced, the 
Carthaginian center purposely gave way, drawing the ad- 
vance wings of their enemy away from the transports and 
the two squadrons in the rear. Then they faced about and 
attacked. Meanwhile the two Carthaginian squadrons on the 
flanks swung round the Roman wedge, the left wing engaging 
the Roman third squadron, which was hampered by the trans- 



54 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

ports, and driving it toward the shore. At the same time the 
Carthaginian right wing attacked the fourth, or reserve, squad- 
ron from the rear and drove it into the open sea. Thus the 
battle went on in three distinct engagements, each separated 
by considerable distance from the others. The outcome is 
thus narrated by Polybius : 



Flagships of the two Consul© 

A 

, \ 

£"«»SClUAOfAO!S ,|l l| I st SQUADRON 

/ \ 

/ _ \ 

flllillllUlllllllllllllfllllllllllltllllllllllllllll 

aiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiijiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii 

TRANSPORTS 

IllllllllllllilllllSUIfllllllllllllillllllllllllllllllllt 

<3* K SQuADRON,or RESERVE 



ROMAN FORMATION AT ECNOMUS 



"Because in each of these divisions the strength of the com- 
batants was nearly equal, the success was also for some time 
equal. But in the progress of the action the affair was brought 
at last to a decision : a different one, perhaps, from what might 
reasonably have been expected in such circumstances. For 
the Roman squadron that had begun the engagement gained 
so full a victory, that Amilcar [the Carthaginian commander] 
was forced to fly, and the consul Manlius brought away the 
vessels that were taken. 

"The other consul, having now perceived the danger in which 
the triarii * and the transports were involved, hastened to their 
assistance with the second squadron, which was still entire. 
The triarii, having received these succors, when they were 

*The rear guard, or fourth squadron. 



THE SEA POWER OF ROME 



55 



just upon the point of yielding, again resumed their courage, 
and renewed the fight with vigor: so that the enemy, being 
surrounded on every side in a manner so sudden and unex- 
pected, and attacked at once both in the front and rear were 
at last constrained to steer away to sea. 

"About this time Manlius also, returning from the engage- 
ment, observed that the ships of the third squadron were 
forced in close to the shore, and there blocked up by the left 
division of the Carthaginian fleet. He joined his forces, there- 
fore, with those of the other consul, who had now placed the 
transports and triarii in security, and hastened to assist these 



CASTWAO>»!AN ADVANCE 




"*Ss^ I / /'-JWyiAN At 



CARTHAGINIAN TACTICS AT THE BATTLE OF ECNOMUS, 256 B.C. 

vessels, which were so invested by the enemy thaj: thev seemed 
to suffer a kind of siege. And, indeed, they must nave all 
been long before destroyed if the Carthaginians, through ap- 
prehension of the corui, had not still kept themselves at dis- 
tance, and declined a close engagement. But the consuls, hav- 
ing now advanced together, surround the enemy, and take 
fifty of their ships with all the men. The rest, being few in 
number, steered close along the shore, and saved themselves 
by flight. 

"Such were the circumstances of this engagement ; in which 
the victory at last was wholly on the side of the Romans. 
Twenty-four of their ships were sunk in the action, and more 
than thirty of the Carthaginians. No vessel of the Romans 



56 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

fell into the hands of the enemy ; but sixty-four of the Cartha- 
ginians were taken with their men." 2 

The battle of Ecnomus had no such decisive effect on his- 
tory as the battle of Salamis, but it was on a far greater scale 
and it reveals an enormous advance in tactics. Three hundred 
thousand men, rowers and warriors, were engaged, and nearly 
700 ships. Up to the battle of Actium, two centuries later, 
Ecnomus remained the greatest naval action in history. 
Moreover, the tactics of the rival fleets show a high degree 
of discipline and efficiency. The Carthaginian plan of divid- 
ing their enemy's force and defeating it by a concentrated at- 
tack on his transport division, was skillfully carried out and 
came perilously near succeeding. Had the first and second 
squadrons of the Carthaginians been able to carry out their 
part of the plan and "contain" the corresponding advance 
squadrons of the Romans, the result would have been an over- 
whelming victory for Carthage, involving not only the de- 
struction of the Roman fleet but also the capture of the Roman 
army of invasion. 

This victory left open the way for the advance into Africa. 
The Romans had landed and marched almost to the gates of 
Carthage when the army was destroyed by the skill of a Spar- 
tan, Xanthippus, and Regulus, the Consul in command, was 
captured. This astonishing catastrophe inflicted on the Ro- 
man legionaries was due to the use of elephants, and offers 
a curious parallel to the effect of the corvi on the Cartha- 
ginian sailors. Such was the terror inspired by these animals 1 
that the Roman soldier would not stand before them until, 
a year or two later, in Sicily, the Consul Cecilius showed how 
they could not only be repulsed but turned back on their own 
army by the use of javelins and arrows. 

Nothing daunted by the loss of their army, Rome dis- 
patched a fleet of 350 ships to Africa to carry off the rem- 
nants of the defeated army that were besieged in the city 
of Aspis. They were met by a hastily organized Carthaginian 
fleet off the promontory of Hermsea in a brief action in which 
2 Polybius's General History, Book I, Chap. 2. 



THE SEA POWER OF ROME 57 

the Romans were overwhelmingly victorious. The latter took 
114 vessels with their crews. The Roman expedition con- 
tinued on its course to Africa, rescued the besieged troops and 
turned back in higher feather toward Sicily. The Consuls in 
command had been warned by the pilots not to attempt to 
skirt the southern coast of Sicily at that season of the year, 
but the warning was disregarded. Suddenly, as the fleet was 
approaching the shore it was overwhelmed by a great gale, 
and out of 464 vessels only eighty survived. 

Frightful as this loss was in ships and men, Rome pro- 
ceeded at once to build another fleet, to the number of 250, 
which, with characteristic energy, was made ready for service 
in three months. This force also, after an ineffectual raid on 
the African coast, fell victim to a storm on the way home 
with the loss of 150 ships. 

Unwilling to relinquish the mastery of the sea that had 
been won by an uninterrupted series of victories, Rome sent 
another fleet to attack a Carthaginian force lying in the har- 
bor of Drepanum. As the Romans approached, the Cartha- 
ginians went out to meet them, and so maneuvered as to force 
them to fight with an enemy in front and the rocks and shoals 
of the coast in their rear. The Roman ships were never able 
to extricate themselves from this predicament, and the greater 
part were either taken or wrecked on the coast. The Consul 
in command managed to escape with about thirty of his ves- 
sels, but 93 were taken with their crews. This is the single 
instance of a pitched battle between Roman and Carthaginian 
fleets in which the victory went to Carthage, a victory due 
entirely to better seamanship. The immediate result of this 
success was the destruction of the Roman squadron lying in 
the port of Lilybseum which was assisting the troops in the 
siege of that town. 

Still another Roman fleet that had the temerity to anchor 
in an exposed position was destroyed by a storm. "For so 
complete was the destruction," writes Polybius, "that scarcely 
a single plank remained entire." 

Stunned by these disasters, the government at Rome gave 
up the idea of contesting any further the command of the 



58 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



sea. The citizens, however, were not willing to submit, and 
displayed a magnificent spirit of patriotism in this the dark- 
est period of the war. Individuals of means, or groups of 
individuals, pledged each a quinquereme, fully equipped, for a 
new fleet, asking reimbursement from the government only 
in case of victory. By these private efforts a force of 200 
quinqueremes was constructed. At this time, as at the very 
beginning, the model for the Roman ships was a prize taken 
from the enemy. 



PANORMUS (PALERMO) 



AEGUSA4 





POINTS OF INTEREST IN THE FIRST PUNIC WAR 

Meanwhile the Carthaginians, confident that the Romans 
were finally driven from the sea, had allowed their own fleet 
to disintegrate. Accordingly when the astonishing news 
reached them that the Romans were again abroad they were 
compelled to fill their ships with raw levies of troops and in- 
experienced rowers and sailors. And, since the Carthaginian 
troops who were besieging the city of Eryx in Sicily were in 
need of supplies, a large number of transports were sent with 
the fleet. The Carthaginian commander planned to make a 
landing unobserved, leave his transports, exchange his raw* 
crews for some of the veterans before Eryx and then give bat- 
tle to the Roman fleet. 



THE SEA POWER OF ROME 59 

This program failed because of the initiative of the Roman 
Consul commanding the new fleet. Having got word of the 
coming of the Carthaginians and divining their plan, he braved 
an unfavorable wind and a rough sea for the sake of forcing 
an action before they could establish contact with their army. 
Accordingly he sought out his enemy and met him (in the 
year 241 B.C.) off the island of /Egusa, near Lilybseum. 
Almost at the first onset the Romans won an overwhelming 
victory, capturing seventy and sinking fifty of the Cartha- 
ginian force. 

This final desperate effort of Rome was decisive. The 
Carthaginians had no navy left, and their armies in Sicily 
were cut off from all communications with their base. Ac- 
cordingly ambassadors went to Rome to sue for peace, and 
the great struggle that had lasted without intermission for 
twenty- four years and reduced both parties to the point of 
exhaustion, ended with a triumph for Rome through a vic- 
tory on the sea. By the treaty of peace Carthage was obliged 
to pay a heavy indemnity and yield all claim to Sicily. 

Whatever historical moral may be drawn from the story 
of the first Punic war, the fact remains that a nation of lands- 
men met the greatest maritime power in the world and de- 
feated it on its own element. In every naval battle save one 
the Romans were victors. It is true, however, that in the 
single defeat off Drepanum and in the dreadful disasters in- 
flicted by storms, Rome lost through lack of knowledge of 
wind and sea. No great naval genius stands above the rest, to 
whom the final success can be attributed. Rome won simply 
through the better fighting qualities of her rank and file and 
the stamina of her citizens. To quote the phrase of a British 
writer, 1 Rome showed the superior "fitness to win." 

The Second Punic War 

In the first Punic war the prize was an island, Sicily. Nat- 
urally, therefore, the fighting was primarily naval. The sec- 
ond Punic war (218-202 B.C.) was essentially a war on land. 
x Fred Jane, Heresies of Sea Power, passim. 



60 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

Carthage, driven from Sicily, turned to Spain and made the 
southern part of the peninsula her province. Using this as 
his base, Hannibal marched overland, crossed the Alps, and 
invaded Italy from the north. Had he followed up his un- 
broken series of victories by marching on the capital instead 
of going into winter quarters at Capua, it is possible that 
Rome might have been destroyed and all subsequent history 
radically changed. The Romans had no general who could 
measure up to the genius of Hannibal, but their spirit was 
unbroken even by the slaughter of Cannae, and their allies 
remained loyal. Moreover, Carthage, thanks to factional 
quarrels and personal jealousies, was deaf to all the requests 
sent by Hannibal for reinforcements when he needed them 
most. In the end, Scipio, after having driven the Cartha- 
ginians out of Spain, dislodged Hannibal from Italy by car- 
rying an invasion into Africa. At the battle of Zama the 
Romans defeated Hannibal and won the war. 

It is difficult to see any significant use of sea power in this 
second Punic war. Neither side seemed to realize what might 
be done in cutting the communications of the other, and both 
sides seemed to be able to use the sea at will. Of course due 
allowance must be made for the limitations of naval activity. 
The quinquereme was too frail to attempt a blockade or to 
patrol the sea lanes in all seasons. Nevertheless both sides 
used the sea for the transport of troops and the conveying of 
intelligence, and neither side made any determined effort to 
establish a real control of the sea. 1 

The Third Punic War (149-146 B.C.) 

The third Punic war has no naval interest. Rome, not sat- 
isfied with defeating her rival in the two previous wars, took a 
convenient pretext to invade Carthage and destroy every ves- 
tige of the city. With this the great maritime empire came to 
an end, and Rome became supreme in the Mediterranean. 

1 For a distinguished opinion to the contrary, v. Mahan, Influence 
of Sea Power upon History, 14 flf. In this view, however, Mahan is not 
supported by Mommsen (vol. II, p. 100), See also Jane, Heresies of Sea 
Power, 60 ff. 



THE SEA POWER OF ROME 61 

2. THE IMPERIAL NAVY; THE CAMPAIGN OF ACTIUM 

After the fall of Carthage no rival appeared to contest the 
sovereignty of Rome upon the sea. The next great naval 
battle was waged between two rival factions of Rome her- 
self at the time when the republic had fallen and the empire 
was about to be reared on its ruins. This was the battle of 
Actium, one of the most decisive in the world's history. 

The rivalry between Antony and Octavius as to who should 
control the destinies of Rome was the immediate cause of the 
conflict. In the parceling out of spoil from the civil wars; 
following the murder of Caesar, Octavius had taken the West, 
Lepidus the African provinces, and Antony the East. Octa- 
vius soon ousted Lepidus and then turned to settle the issue 
of mastery with Antony. In this he had motives of revenge 
as well as ambition. Antony had robbed him of his inheri- 
tance from Caesar, and divorced his wife, the sister of Oc- 
tavius, in favor of Cleopatra, with whom he had become com- 
pletely infatuated. In this quarrel the people of Rome were 
inclined to support Octavius, because of their indignation over 
a reported declaration made by Antony to the effect that he in- 
tended to make Alexandria rather than Rome the capital of 
the empire and rule East and West from the Nile rather than 
the Tiber. Both sides began preparations for the conflict. 
Antony possessed the bulk of the Roman navy and the Roman 
legions of the eastern provinces. To his fleet he added squad- 
rons of Egyptian and Phoenician vessels of war, and to his 
army he brought large bodies of troops from the subject prov- 
inces of the East. In addition he spent great sums of money 
by means of his agents in Rome to arouse disaffection against 
Octavius. At the outset he acted with energy and caused his 
antagonist the gravest anxiety. It was clear also that Antony 
intended to take the offensive. He established winter quar- 
ters at Patras, on the Gulf of Corinth, during the winter of 
32-31 B.C., billeting his army in various towns on the west 
coast of Greece, and keeping it supplied by grain ships from 
AJexandria. His fleet he anchored in the Ambracian Gulf, a 



62 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

landlocked bay, thirty miles wide, lying north of the Gulf of 
Corinth; it is known to-day as the Gulf of Arta. 

Octavius, however, was equally determined not to yield the 
offensive to his adversary, and boldly collected ships and troops 
for a movement in force against Antony's position. His 
troops were also Roman legionaries, experienced in war, but 
his fleet was considerably less in numbers and the individual 
ships much smaller than the quinqueremes and octiremes of 
Antony. The ships of Octavius were mostly biremes and tri- 
remes. These disadvantages, however, were offset by the fact 
that his admiral, Agrippa, was an experienced sea-fighter, 
having won a victory near Mylse during the civil wars, and by 
the other fact that the crews under him, recruited from the 
Dalmatian coast, were hardy, seafaring men. These were 
called Liburni, and the type of ship they used was known as 
the Liburna. This was a two-banked galley, but the term wag 
already becoming current for any light man of war, irrespec- 
tive of the number of banks of oars. In contrast with these 
Liburni, who divided their days between fishing and piracy 
and knew all the tricks of fighting at sea, the crews of An- 
tony's great fleet were in many cases landsmen who had been 
suddenly impressed into service. 

As soon as Antony had moved his force to western Greece 
he seemed paralyzed by indecision and made no move to avail 
himself of his advantageous position to strike. He had plenty 
of money, while his adversary was at his wit's end to find even 
credit. He had the admiration of his soldiers, who had fol- 
lowed him through many a campaign to victory, while Oc- 
tavius had no popularity with his troops, most of whom were 
reluctant to fight against their old comrades in arms. And 
finally, Antony had a preponderating fleet with which he could 
command the sea and compel his opponent to fight on the de- 
fensive in Italian territory. All these advantages he allowed 
to slip away. 

During the winter of 32-31 one-third of Antony's crews 
perished from lack of proper supplies and the gaps were filled 
by slaves, mule-drivers, and plowmen — any one whom his 
captains could seize and impress from the surrounding country. 



THE SEA POWER OF ROME 63 

The following spring Agrippa made a feint to the south by 
capturing Methone at the southern tip of the Peloponnesus, 
thus threatening the wheat squadrons from Egypt on which 
Antony depended. Next came the news that Octavius had 
landed an army in Epirus and was marching south. Then 
Antony realized that his adversary was aiming to destroy the 
fleet in the Ambracian Gulf and hastened thither. He arrived 
with a squadron ahead of his troops, at almost the same in- 
stant as Octavius, and if Octavius had had the courage to at- 
tack the tired and disorganized crews of Antony's squadron, 
Antony would have been lost. But by dressing his crews in 
the armor of legionaries and drawing up his ships in a posi- 
tion for fighting, with oars suspended, he "bluffed" his enemy 
into thinking that he had the support of his troops. When 
the latter arrived Antony established a great camp on Caps 
Actium, which closes the southern side of the Gulf, and for- 
tified the entrance on that side. 

Thereafter for months the two forces faced each other on 
opposite sides of the Gulf, neither side risking more than in- 
significant skirmishes. During this time Octavius had free 
use of the sea for his supplies, while the heavier fleet of An- 
tony lay idle in harbor. Nevertheless, Octavius did not dare 
to risk all on a land battle, and conducted his campaign in a 
characteristically timid and vacillating manner which should 
have made it easy for Antony to take the aggressive and win. 
But the famous lieutenant of Julius Caesar was no longer the 
man who used to win the devotion of his soldiers by his cour- 
age and audacity. He was broken by debauchery and torn 
this way and that by two violently hostile parties in his own 
camp. One party, called the Roman, wanted him to come 
to an understanding with Octavius, or beat him in battle, and 
go to Rome as the restorer of the republic. The other party, 
the Egyptian, was Cleopatra and her following. Cleopatra 
was interested in holding Antony to Egypt, to consolidate 
through him a strong Egyptian empire, and she was not at 
all interested in the restoration of Roman liberties. In An- 
tony's desire to please Cleopatra and his attempt to deceive 
his Roman friends into thinking that he was working for their 



64 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

aims, may be seen the explanation of the utter lack of strategy 
or consistent plan in his entire campaign against Octavius. 

At the beginning of July Antony apparently proposed a 
naval battle. Instantly the suspicions of the Roman party 
were awakened. They cried out that Antony was evidently 
going back to Egypt without having won the decisive battle 
against Octavius on land, which would really break the ene- 
my's power, and without paying any heed to the political prob- 
lems at Rome. Such a furor was raised between the two 
parties that Antony abandoned his plan and made a feint 
toward the land battle in Epirus that the Romans wanted. 
Meanwhile two of his adherents, one a Roman, the other a 
king from Asia Minor, exasperated by the insolence of Cleo- 
patra, deserted to Octavius. 

August came and went without action or change in the 
situation. Meanwhile as Antony's camp had been placed in a 
pestilential spot for midsummer heat, he suffered great losses 
from disease. By this time Cleopatra was interested in noth- 
ing but a return to Egypt. Accordingly she persuaded An- 
tony to order a naval battle without asking anybody's advice, 
and he set the date August 29 for the sally of his fleet. The 
Romans were amazed and protested, but in vain. Prepara- 
tions went on in such a way as to make it clear to the ob- 
serving that what Antony was planning was not so much 
a battle as a return to Egypt. Vessels which he did not need 
outside for battle he ordered burned, although such ships 
would usually be kept as reserves to make up losses in fighting. 
Moreover, he astonished the captains by ordering them to take 
out into action the big sails which were always left ashore 
before a battle. Nor did his explanation that they would be 
needed in pursuit satisfy them. It appeared also that he was 
employing trusted slaves at night to load the Egyptian galleys 
with all of Cleopatra's treasure. Two more Roman leaders, 
satisfied as to Antony's real intention, deserted to Octavius 
and informed him of Antony's plans. 

Meanwhile a heavy storm had made it impossible to attempt 
the action on August 29 or several days after. On the 2d of 4 
September (31 B.C.) the sea became smooth again. Octavius 



THE SEA POWER OF ROME 



65 



and Agrippa drew out their fleet into open water, about three- 
quarters of a mile from the mouth of the gulf, forming line 
in three divisions. They waited till nearly noon before An- 
tony's fleet began to make its expected appearance to offer 
battle. This also was formed in three divisions corresponding 
to those of their enemy. The Egyptian division of sixty 




SCENE OF BATTLE OF ACTIUM, 31 B.C. 



ships under Cleopatra took up a safe position in the rear of 
the center. 

There was a striking contrast in the types of ships in the 
opposing ranks. The galleys of Octavius were low in the 
water, and nimble in their handling; those of Antony were 
bulky and high, with five to ten banks of oars, and their nat- 
ural unhandiness was made worse by a device intended to pro- 
tect them against ramming. This consisted of a kind of boom 
of heavy timbers rigged out on all sides of the hull. In addi- 
tion to the higher sides these ships supported towers and cita- 



66 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

dels built upon their decks, equipped with every form of the 
artillery of that day, especially ' catapults capable of hurling 
heavy stones upon the enemy's deck. 

Against such formidable floating castles, the light ships of 
Agrippa and Octavius could adopt only skirmishing tactics. 
They rushed in where they could shear away the oar blades 
of an enemy without getting caught by the great grappling 
irons swung out from his decks. They kept clear of the 
heavy stones from the catapults through superior speed and 
ability to maneuver quickly, but they were unable to strike 
their ponderous adversaries any vital blow. On the other 
hand the great hulks of Antony were unable to close with 
them, and though the air was filled with a storm of arrows, 
stones and javelins, neither side was able to strike decisively 
at the other. As at Salamis the opposite shores were lined 
with the opposing armies, and every small success was hailed 
by shouts from a hundred thousand throats on the one side 
and long dra^vn murmurs of dismay from an equal host on 
the other. 

In these waters a north wind springs up every afternoon — 
a fact that Antony and Cleopatra had counted on — and as 
soon as the breeze shifted the royal galley of Cleopatra spread 
its crimson sail and, followed by the entire Egyptian division, 
sailed through the lines and headed south. Antony immedi- 
ately left his flagship, boarded a quinquereme and followed. 
This contemptible desertion of the commander in chief was 
not generally known in his fleet; as for the disappearance of 
the Egyptian squadron, it was doubtless regarded as a good 
riddance. The battle, therefore, went on as stubbornly as 
ever. 

Late in the afternoon Agrippa, despairing of harming his 
enemy by ordinary tactics, achieved considerable success by 
the use of javelins wrapped in burning tow, and fire rafts 
that were set drifting upon the clumsy hulks which could not 
get out of their way. By this means a number of Antony's 
ships were destroyed, but the contest remained indecisive. At 
sunset Antony's fleet retired in some disorder to their anchor- 



THE SEA POWER OF HOME 67 

age in the gulf. Octavius attempted no pursuit but kept the 
sea all night, fearing a surprise attack or an attempted flight 
from the gulf. 

Meanwhile a flying wing of Octavius's fleet had been sent 
in pursuit of Antony and Cleopatra, who escaped only after 
a rear guard action had been fought in which two of Cleo- 
patra's ships were captured. The fugitives put ashore at Cape 
Tsenarus, to enable Antony to send a message to his general, 
Canidius, ordering him to take his army through Macedonia 
into Asia. Then the flight was resumed to Alexandria. 

On the morning of the 3d Octavius sent a message to the 
enemy's camp announcing the fact of Antony's desertion and 
calling on the fleet and army to surrender. The Roman sol- 
diers were unwilling to believe that their commander had been 
guilty of desertion, and were confident that he had been sum- 
moned away on important business connected with the cam- 
paign. Their general, however, did not dare convey to them 
Antony's orders because they would betray the truth and pro- 
voke mutiny. Consequently he did nothing. Certain Roman 
senators and eastern princes saw the light and quietly went 
over to the camp of Octavius. Several days of inaction fol- 
lowed, during which the desertions continued and the rumor 
of Antony's flight found increasing belief. On the seventh 
day, Canidius, who' found himself in a hopeless dilemma, also 
went over to Octavius. This desertion by the commander set- 
tled the rest of the force. A few scattered into Macedonia, 
but the great bulk of the army and all that was left of the 
fleet surrendered. Nineteen legions and more than ten thou- 
sand cavalry thus came over to Octavius and took service 
under him. This was the real victory of Actium. In the 
words of the Italian historian Ferrero, "it was a victory gained 
without fighting, and Antony was defeated in this supreme 
struggle, not by the valor of his adversary or by his own 
defective strategy or tactics, but by the hopeless inconsistency 
of his double-faced policy, which, while professing to be 
republican and Roman, was actually Egyptian and monar- 
chical." 



68 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

The story of the naval battle of Actium is a baffling problem 
to reconstruct on account of the wide divergence in the ac- 
counts. For instance, the actual number of ships engaged is 
a matter of choice between the extremes of 200 to 500 on a 
side. And the consequences were so important to Octavius 
and to Rome that the accounts were naturally adorned after- 
wards with the most glowing colors. Every poet who lived 
by the bounty of Augustus in later years naturally felt inspired 
to pay tribute to it in verse. But the actual naval battle seems 
to have been of an indecisive character. For that matter, 
even after the wholesale surrender of Antony's Roman army 
and fleet, neither Anthony nor Octavius realized the impor- 
tance of what had happened. Antony had recovered from 
worse disasters before, and felt secure in Alexandria. Octa- 
vius at first followed up his advantage with timid and uncer- 
tain steps. Only after the way was made easy by the hasty 
submission of the Asiatic princes and the wave of popularity 
and enthusiasm that was raised in Rome by the news of the 
victory, did Octavius press the issue to Egypt itself. There 
the war came to an end with the suicide of both Antony and 
Cleopatra. 

As in the case of the indecisive naval battle off the capes 
of the Chesapeake, which led directly to the surrender 6*f 
Cornwallis, an action indecisive in character may be most de- 
cisive in results. Actium may not have been a pronounced 
naval victory but it had tremendous consequences. As at Sal- 
amis, East and West met for the supremacy of the western 
world, and the East was beaten back. It is not likely that the 
Egyptian or the Syrian would have dominated the genius of 
the western world for any length of time, but the defeat of 
Octavius would have meant a hybrid empire which would have 
fallen to pieces like the empire of Alexander, leaving western 
Europe split into a number of petty states. On the other 
hand, Octavius was enabled to build on the consequences of 
Actium the great outlines of the Roman empire, the influence 
of which on the civilized world to-day is still incalculable. 
When he left Rome to fight Antony, the government was 
bankrupt and the people torn with faction. When he returned 



THE SEA POWER OF ROME 69 

he brought the vast treasure of Egypt and found a people 
united to support him. Actium, therefore, is properly taken 
as the significant date for the beginning of the Roman em- 
pire. Octavius took the name of his grand-uncle Caesar, the 
title of Augustus, and as "Imperator" became the first of the 
Roman emperors. 

The relation of the battle of Actium to this portentous 
change in the fortunes of Octavius was formally recognized 
by him on the scene where it took place. Nicopolis, the City 
of Victory, was founded upon the site of his camp, with the 
beaks of tha captured ships as trophies adorning its forum. 
The little temple of Apollo on the point of Actium he rebuilt 
on an imposing scale and instituted there in honor of his vic- 
tory the "Actian games," which were held thereafter for two 
hundred years. 

After the battle of Actium and the establishment of a pow- 
erful Roman empire without a rival in the world, there fol- 
lows a long period in which the Mediterranean, and indeed 
all the waterways known to the civilized nations, belonged 
without challenge to the galleys of Rome. Naval stations 
were established to assist in the one activity left to ships of 
war, the pursuit of pirates, but otherwise there was little or 
nothing to do. And during this long period, indeed, down to 
the Middle Ages, practically nothing is known of the develop- 
ment in naval types until the emergence of the low, one- or 
two-banked galley of the wars between the Christian and the 
Mohammedan. The first definite description we have of war- 
ships after the period of Actium comes at the end of the 
ninth century. 

There was some futile naval fighting against the Vandals 
in the days when Rome was crumbling. Finally, by a curious 
freak of history, Genseric the Vandal took a fleet out from 
Carthage against Rome, and swept the Mediterranean. In 
the year 455, some six centuries after Rome had wreaked 
her vengeance on Carthage, this Vandal fleet anchored unop- 
posed in the Tiber and landed an army that sacked the im- 



70 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

perial city, which had been for so long a period mistress of the 
world, and had given her name to a great civilization. 

During the four centuries in which the Pax Romana rested 
upon the world, it is easy to conceive of the enormous impor- 
tance to history and civilization of having sea and river, thl 
known world over, an undisputed highway for the fleets of 
Rome. Along these routes, even more than along the military 
roads, traveled the institutions, the arts, the language, the lit- 
erature, the laws, of one of the greatest civilizations in his- 
tory. And ruthless as was the destruction of Vandal and 
Goth in the city itself and in the peninsula, they could not de- 
stroy the heritage that had been spread from Britain to the 
Black Sea and from the Elbe to the upper waters of the Nile. 

REFERENCES 

History of Rome, Theodor Mommsen, tr. by W. P. Dickson, 1867. 

General History, Polybius, transl. by Hampton, 1823. 

History of the Romans Under the Empire, Chas. Merivale (vol. 
III.), 1866. 

The Greatness and Decline of Rome, G. Ferrero, tr. by A. E. 
Zemmern, 1909. 

Etudes sur l'Histoire Militaire et Maritime des Grecs et des 
Romains, Paul Serre, 1888. 

Fleets of the First Punic War, W. W. Tarn, in Journal of Helle- 
nic Studies, 1907. 

Heresies of Sea Power (pp. 40-71), Fred Jane, 1906. 

Influence of Sea Power on History (pp. 15 ft.), A. T. Mahan, 1889. 

For a complete bibliography of Roman sea power, v. Influence of 
Sea Power on the Roman Republic (Doctoral Dissertation), 
F. W. Clark, 1915. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE NAVIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES : THE EAST- 
ERN EMPIRE 

The thousand years following the collapse of the Roman em- 
pire, a period generally referred to as the Middle Ages, are 
characterized by a series of barbarian invasions. Angles, Sax- 
ons, Goths, Visigoths, Huns, Vandals, Vikings, Slavs, Arabs, 
and Turks poured over the broken barriers of the empire and 
threatened to extinguish the last spark of western and Chris- 
tian civilization. Out of this welter of invasions and the an- 
archy of petty kingdoms arose finally the powerful nations 
that perpetuated the inheritance from Athens, Rome, and 
Jerusalem, and developed on this foundation the newer insti- 
tutions of political and intellectual freedom that have made 
western civilization mistress of the world. For this triumph 
of West over East, of Christianity over barbarism, we have 
to thank partly the courage and genius of great warriors and 
statesmen who arose here and there, like Alfred of England 
and Martel of France, but chiefly the Eastern Empire, with its 
capital at Constantinople, which stood through this entire 
epoch as the one great bulwark against which the invasions 
dashed in vain. In this story of defense, the Christian fleets 
won more than one Salamis, as we shall see in the course of 
this chapter. 

In the year 328 A.D. the Emperor Constantine the Great 
moved his capital to Byzantium and named it "New Rome." 
In honor of its founder, however, the name was changed soon 
to "Constantinople," which it has retained ever since. It may 
seem strange that after so many glorious centuries Rome 
should have been deprived of the honor of being the center 
of the great empire which bore its own name, but in the fourth 

71 



72 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

century the city itself had no real significance. All power 
rested in the person of the Emperor himself, and wherever he 
went became for the time being the capital for all practical 
purposes. At this time the empire was already on the de- 
fensive and the danger lay in the east. Constantine needed a 
capital nearer the scene of future campaigns, nearer his weak- 
est frontier, the Danube, and nearer the center of the em- 
pire. Byzantium not only served these purposes but also pos- 
sessed natural advantages of a very high order. It was situ- 
ated where Europe and Asia meet, it commanded the water- 
way between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, and it was 
a natural citadel. Whoever captured the city must needs be 
powerful by land and sea. Under the emperor's direction 
the new capital was greatly enlarged and protected by a sys- 
tem of massive walls. Behind these walls the city stood fast 
for over a thousand years against wave after wave of bar- 
barian invasion. 

Of the wars with the Persians, the Vandals, and the Huns' 
nothing need be said here, for they do not involve the opera- 
tions of fleets. The city was safe so long as no enemy ap- 
peared with the power to hold the sea. That power appeared 
in the seventh century when the Arabs, or "Saracens," as they 
were called in Europe, swept westward and northward in the 
first great Mohammedan invasion. 

Most migrations are to be explained by the pressure of ene- 
mies, or the lack of food and pasturage in the countries left 
behind, or the discovery of better living conditions in the 
neighboring countries. But the impulse behind the two tre- 
mendous assaults of Islam upon Europe seems to' have been 
religious fanaticism of a character and extent unmatched in 
history. The founder of the Faith, Mohammed, ruled Mecca 
from 622 to 632. He succeeded in imbuing his followers^wrthL 
the passion of winning the world to the knowledge of Allah 
and Mohammed his prophet. The unbeliever was to be offered 
the alternatives of conversion or death, and the believer who 
fell in the holy wars would be instantly transported to Para- 
dise. Men who actually believe that they will be sent to a 
blissful immortality after death are the most terrible soldiers 



THE EASTERN EMPIRE 



73 



to face, for they would as readily die as live. In fact Crom- 
well's "Ironsides" of a later day owed their invincibility to 
very much the same spirit. At all events, by the time of Mo- 
hammed's death all Arabia had been converted to his faith 
and, fired with zeal, turned to conquer the world. Hitherto 
the tribes of Arabia were scattered and disorganized, and 
Arabia as a country meant nothing to the outside world. Now 
under the leadership of the Prophet it had become a driving 
force of tremendous power. Mohammedan armies swept over 
Persia into Syria. In 637, only five years after Mohammed's 




THE SARACEN EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT, ABOUT Jl$ A.D. 



death, Jerusalem surrendered, and shortly afterwards Egypt 
was conquered. Early in the eighth century the Arabs ruled 
from the Indus on the east, and the Caucasus on the north, 
to the shores of the Atlantic on the west. Their empire curved 
westward along the coast of northern Africa, through Spain, 
like one of their own scimitars, threatening all Christendom. 
Indeed, the Arab invasion stands unparalleled in history for 
its rapidity and extent. 

The one great obstacle in the way was the Christian, or 
Roman, empire with its center at Constantinople. Muaviah, 
the Emir of Syria, was the first to perceive that nothing could 
be done against the empire until the Arabs had wrested from 
it the command of the sea. Accordingly he set about building 



74 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

a great naval armament. In 649 this fleet made an attack 
on Cyprus but was defeated. The following year, however, it 
took an important island, Aradus, off the coast of Syria, once 
a stronghold of the Phoenicians, and sacked it with savage bar- 
barity. An expedition sent from Constantinople to recover 
Alexandria was met by this fleet and routed. This first naval 
victory over the Christians gave the Saracens unbounded con- 
fidence in their ability to fight on the sea. They sailed into 
the ^Egean, took Rhodes, plundered Cos, and returned loaded 
with booty. Muaviah, elated with these successes, planned a 
great combined land and water expedition against the Chris- 
tian capital. 

At this point it is worth pausing to consider what the fight- 
ing ship of this period was like. As we have seen in the pre- 
ceding chapter the Roman navy sank into complete decay. At 
the end of the fourth century there was practically no imperial 
navy in existence. The conquest of the Vandals by Belisarius 
in the sixth century involved the creation of a fleet, but when 
that task was over the navy again disappeared until the ap- 
pearance of the Arabs compelled the building of a new im- 
perial fleet. The small provincial squadrons then used to pa- 
trol the coasts were by no means adequate to meet the crisis. 

The warships of this period were called "dromons," a term 
that persists even in the time of the Turkish invasion eight 
centuries later. The word means "fast sailers" or "racers." 
The dromon was not the low galley of the later Middle Ages 
but a two-banked ship, probably quite as large as the Roman 
quinquereme, carrying a complement of about 300 men. 
Amidships was built a heavy castle or redoubt of timbers, 
pierced with loopholes for archery. On the forecastle rose a 
kind of turret, possibly revolving, from which, after Greek 
fire was invented, the tubes or primitive cannon projected the 
substance on the decks of the enemy. The dromon had two 
masts, lateen rigged, and between thirty and forty oars to a 
side. 

There were two classes of dromons, graded according to 
size, and a third class of ship known as the "pamphylian," 
which was apparently of a cruiser type, less cumbered with 



THE EASTERN EMPIRE 



75 



superstructure. In addition there were small scout and dis- 
patch boats of various shapes and sizes. 

Both Christian and Saracen fought with these kinds of war- 
ships. Apparently the Arabs simply copied the vessels they 
found already in use by their enemies, and added no new 
device of their own. 

In 655 Muaviah started his great double invasion against 




EUROPE S EASTERN FRONTIER 



Constantinople. He sent his fleet into the /Egean, while he 
himself with an army tried to force the passes of the Taurus' 
mountains. Before the Arab fleet had gone far it met the 
Christian fleet, commanded by the Emperor himself, off the 
town of Phaselis on the southwestern coast of Asia Minor. 
A great battle followed. The Christian emperor, Constantine 
IV, distinguished himself by personal courage throughout the 
action, but the day went sorely against the Christians. At last 
the flagship was captured and he himself survived only by 
leaping into a vessel that came to his rescue while his men 



76 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

fought to cover his escape. It was a terrible defeat, for 
20,000 Christians had been killed and the remnants of their 
fleet were in full retreat. But the Saracens had bought their 
victory at such a price that they were themselves in no con- 
dition to* profit by it, and the naval expedition went no further. 
Meanwhile Muaviah had not succeeded in forcing the Taurus 
with his army, so that the grand assault came to nothing after 
all. 

The following year the murder of the Caliph brought on a 
civil war among the Saracens, in consequence of which Mua- 
viah arranged a truce with Constantine. The latter was' 
thus enabled to turn his attention to the beating back of the 
Slavs in the east and the recovery of imperial possessions in 
the west, notably the city and province of Carthage. During 
the last of these campaigns he was killed by a slave. 

The death of this energetic and able ruler seemed to Mua- 
viah the opportunity to begin fresh operations against the 
Christian empire. Three great armies invaded the territory 
of. the Cross. One plundered Syracuse, another seized and 
fortified a post that threatened the existence of Carthage, a 
third pushed to the shores of the Sea of Marmora. These 
were, however, only preliminary to the grand assault on the 
capital itself. 

In 673 a great Arab armada forced the Hellespont and 
captured Cyzicus. With this as a base, the fleet landed an 
army on the northern shore of the Sea of Marmora. By these 
means Constantinople was invested by land and sea. But the 
great walls proved impregnable against the attacks of the 
army, and the Christian fleet, sheltered in the Golden Horn^ 
was able to sally out from time to time and make successful 
raids on detachments of the Saracen ships. This state di af- 
fairs continued for six months, after which Muaviah Retired 
with his army to Cyzicus, leaving a strong naval guard to 
hold the straits. 

The next spring Muaviah again landed his army on the 
European side and besieged the city for several months. The 
second year's operations were no more successful than the 




THE EASTERN EMPIRE 77 

first, and again the Arab force retired to Cyzicus for the 
winter. 

The Arab commander was determined to stick it out until 
he had forced the surrender of the city by sheer exhaustion, 
but his plan had a fatal error. During the winter months the 
land blockade was abandoned, with the result that supplies 
for the next year's siege were readily collected for the be- 
leaguered city. Emperor and citizens alike rose to the emer- 
gency with a spirit of devotion that burned brighter with 
every year of the siege. Meanwhile the Christians of the 

outlying provinces of Syria g_- 

and Africa were also fight- [ \~B L A C l< 
ing stubbornly and with con- 
siderable success against the 
enemy. The year 676 passed 
without any material change 
in the situation. 

During the siege a Syrian 
architect named Callinicus is 
said to have come to Con- 
stantinople with a prepara- 
tion of his own invention, Constantinople and vicinity 
"Greek fire," which he of- 
fered the Emperor for use against the Saracen. This, ac- 
cording to one historian, "was a semi-liquid substance, 
composed of sulphur, pitch, dissolved niter, and petroleum 
boiled together and mixed with certain less important and more 
obscure substances. . . . When ejected it caught the wood- 
work on which it fell and set it so thoroughly on fire that 
there was no possibility of extinguishing the conflagration. 
It could only be put out, it is said, by pouring vinegar, wine, 
or sand upon it." 1 

Constantine V, the Emperor, was quick to see the possibili- 
ties of the innovation and equipped his dromons with project- 
ing brass tubes for squirting the substance upon the enemy's 
ships. These are sometimes referred to as "siphons," but it 
is not clear just how they were operated. One writer 2 is of 

1 The Art of War, Oman, p. 546. 

a The Byzantine Empire, Foord, p. 139. 



SEA OF MARMORA 



78 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

the opinion that something of the secret of gunpowder had 
been obtained from the East and that the substance was ac- 
tually projected by a charge of gunpowder; in short, that these 
"siphons" were primitive cannon. In addition to these tubes 
other means were prepared for throwing the fire. Earthen- 
ware jars containing it were to be flung by hand or arbalist, 
and darts and arrows were wrapped with tow soaked in the 
substance. 

The Christian fleet was no match for the Saracen in num- 
bers, but Constantine pinned his faith on the new invention. 
Accordingly, during the fourth year of the siege, 677, he 
boldly led his fleet to the attack. We have no details of this 
battle beyond the fact that the Greek fire struck such terror 
by its destructive effect that the Saracens were utterly defeated. 
This unexpected blow completed the growing demoralization 
of the besiegers. The army returned to the Asiatic shore of 
the Bosphorus, and the survivors of the fleet turned home- 
wards. Constantine followed up his victory with splendid 
energy. He landed troops on the Asiatic shore, pursued the 
retreating Arabs and drove the shattered remnant of their 
army back into Syria. The fleet was overtaken by a storm 
in the ^Egean and suffered heavily. Before the ships could 
reassemble, the Christians were upon them and almost noth- 
ing was left of the great Saracen armada. Thus the second 
great assault on Constantinople was shattered by the most 
staggering disaster that had ever befallen the cause of Islam. 

The Christian empire once more stood supreme, and that 
supremacy was attested by the terms of peace which the de- 
feated Muaviah was glad to accept. There was to be a truce: 
of thirty years, during which the Christian emperor was to 
receive an annual tribute of 3000 pounds of gold, fifty Arab 
horses and fifty slaves. 

It is unfortunate that there was no Herodotus to tell the de- 
tails of this victory, for it was tremendously important to 
European civilization. Western Europe was then a welter 
of barbarism and anarchy, and if Constantinople had fallen, in 
all probability the last vestige of Roman civilization would 
have been destroyed. Moreover, the battle is of special in- 



THE EASTERN EMPIRE 79 

terest from a tactical point of view because it was won by a 
new device, Greek fire, which was the most destructive naval 
weapon up to the time when gunpowder and artillery took its 
place. Indeed this substance may be said to have saved Chris- 
tian civilization for several centuries, for the secret of its com- 
position was carefully preserved at Constantinople and the 
Arabs never recovered from their fear of it. 

The victory did not, however, mark the crisis of the strug- 
gle. In the half century that followed, Constantinople suffered 
from weak or imbecile emperors while the Caliphate gained 
ground under able rulers and generals. In the first fifteen 
years of the eighth century the Saracens reached the climax 
of their power. Under a great general, Muza, they con- 
quered Spain and spread into southern France. It was he who 
conceived the grandiose plan of conquering Christendom by a 
simultaneous attack from the west and from the east, con- 
verging at the city of Rome. One army was to advance from 
Asia Minor and take Constantinople ; another was to cross the 
Pyrenees and overrun the territory of the Franks. Had the 
enterprise been started at the time proposed there could have 
been little opposition in the west, for the Franks were then 
busy fighting each other, but luckily Muza fell into disgrace 
with the Caliph at this time and his great project was under- 
taken by less able hands and on a piecemeal plan. 

The eastern line of invasion was undertaken first in the 
year 715. A fleet of warships and transports to the number 
of 1800 sailed to the Hellespont, carrying about 80,000 
troops, while a great army collected at Tarsus and marched 
overland toward the same destination. Meanwhile two more 
fleets were being prepared in the ports of Africa and Egypt, 
and a third army was being collected to reenforce the first ex- 
pedition. This army was to be under the personal command 
of the Caliph himself. The third attack on the Christian 
capital was intended to be the supreme effort. 

Fortunately, the ruler of Constantinople at this hour of 
peril was a man of ability and energy, Leo III ; but the em- 
pire had sunk so low as a result of the misrule of his prede- 
cessors that his authority scarcely extended beyond the shores 



80 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

of the Sea of Marmora, and his resources were at a low ebb. 
The navy on which so much depended was brought to a high 
point of efficiency, but it was so inferior in numbers to the 
Saracen armada that he dared not attempt even a defense of 
the Dardanelles. 

For the Arabs all went well at first. Unopposed they trans- 
ported a part of their army to the European shore, moved 
toward Constantinople and invested it by land and sea. One 
detachment was sent to cover Adrianople, which was occupied 
by a Christian garrison; the rest of the force concentrated 
on the capital itself. 

Meanwhile the Christian fleet lay anchored in the shelter of 
the Golden Horn, protected by a boom of chains and logs. 
As the Saracen ships came up to occupy the straits above 
the city they fell into confusion in trying to stem the rapid 
current. Seeing his opportunity, the emperor ordered the 
boom opened, and leading the way in his flagship, he fell upon 
the huddle of Saracen vessels in the channel. The latter could 
make little resistance, and before the main body of the fleet 
could work up to the rescue, the Christians had destroyed 
twenty and taken a number of prizes back to the Horn. Again 
Greek fire had proved its deadly efficacy. Elated with this 
success, Leo ordered the boom opened wide and, lying in 
battle order at the mouth of the Horn, he challenged the Arab 
fleet to attack. But such was the terror inspired by Greek fire 
that the Grand Vizier, in spite of his enormous superiority in 
numbers, declined to close. Instead he withdrew his dromons 
out of the Bosphorus and thereafter followed the less risky 
policy of a blockade. This initial success of the Christian 
fleet had the important effect of leaving open the sea route 
to the Black Sea, through which supplies could still reach the 
beleaguered city. 

The Arabs then sat down to wear out the defenders by a 
protracted siege which lasted three years. In the spring of 
718 the new army and the two new fleets arrived on the scene. 
One of the latter succeeded, probably by night, in passing 
through the Bosphorus and closing the last inlet to the city. 
The situation for the defenders became desperate. Many 



THE EASTERN EMPIRE 81 

of the men serving on these new fleets, however, were Chris- 
tians. These took every opportunity to desert, and gave im- 
portant information to the emperor as to the disposition of the 
Arab ships. Acting on this knowledge, Leo took his fleet 
out from the shelter of the boom and moved up the straits 
against the African and Egyptian squadrons that were block- 
ading the northern exit. The deserters guided him to where 
these squadrons lay, at anchor and unprepared for action. 
What followed was a massacre rather than a battle. The 
Christian members of the crews deserted wholesale and turned 
upon their Moslem officers. Ship after ship was rammed 
by the Christian dromons or set on fire by the terrible sub- 
stance which every Arab regarded with superstitious dread. 
Some were driven ashore, others captured, many more sunk 
or burnt to the water's edge. Of a total of nearly 800 vessels 
practically nothing was left. 

Leo followed up this spectacular naval victory by trans- 
porting a force from the garrison of the city to the opposite 
shore of the Bosphorus, attacking the army encamped there 
and driving it in rout. Meanwhile the Bulgarian chieftain 
had responded to Leo's appeal and, relieving the siege of 
Adrianople, beat back the Saracen army at that point with 
great slaughter. The fugitives of that army served to throw 
into panic the troops encamped round the walls of Constanti- 
nople, already demoralized by disease, the death of their lead- 
ers, -and the annihilation of the African and Egyptian fleets in 
the Bosphorus. 

The great retreat began. The Arab soldiers started back 
through Asia Minor, but only 30,000 out of the original 
force of 180,000 lived to reach Tarsus. The fleet set sail for 
the yEgean, and as in the similar retreat of a half century 
before, the Arabs were overwhelmed by a storm with terrible 
losses. The Christian ships picked off many survivors, and 
the Christians of the islands destroyed others that sought 
shelter in any port. It is said that out of the original armada 
of 1800 vessels only five returned to Syria! Thus the third 
and supreme effort of the Saracen ended in one of the greatest 
military disasters in history. 



82 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

The service of the Christian fleet in the salvation of the 
empire at this time is thus summarized by a historian : 

"The fleet won most of the credit for the fine defense; it 
invariably fought with admirable readiness and discipline, 
and was handled in the most masterful manner. It checked 
the establishment of a naval blockade at the very outset, and 
broke it when it was temporarily formed in 718; it enabled the 
army to operate at will on either shore of the Bosphorus, and 
it followed up the retreating Saracens and completed the ruin 
of the great armament." * 

The winning stroke in this campaign was the tremendous 
naval victory at the mouth of the Bosphorus, and this, even 
more emphatically than Constantine's victory in 677, deserves 
to be called another Salamis. Not only did it save the Chris- 
tian empire but it checked the Caliphate at the summit of its 
power and started it on its decline. Not for thirty years 
afterwards was the Saracen able to put any considerable fleet 
upon the sea. 

It was ten years after the Arab defeat at Constantinople 
that the armies of the west began the other part of Muza's 
project — the conquest of the Franks. By this time the Frank- 
ish power had been united and able to present a powerful de- 
fense. In six bitterly contested battles between Tours and 
Poitiers in 732 Charles Martel defeated the Arabs in a cam- 
paign that may well be called the Marathon, or better, ±he 
Platsea, of the Middle Ages, for it completed the work done 
by the imperial navy at Constantinople. From this time (for- 
ward the power of the Saracen began to ebb by land and sea. 

As it ebbed, the new cities of Genoa, Pisa, and Venice began 
to capture the trade and hold the control of the sea that once 
had been Saracen, until the Christian control was so well es- 
tablished as to make possible the Crusades. Later, as we shall 
see, a second invasion of Mohammedans, the Turks, ably as- 
sisted by the descendants of the Arabs who conquered Spain, 
once more threatened to control the Mediterranean for the 
cause of Islam. IBut the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, 

1 The Byzantine Empire, Foord, p. 170. 



THE EASTERN EMPIRE 83 

which fell into the hands of the Arabs as soon as they took to 
the water, remained in Arab hands down to the times of the 
Portuguese. In those waters, because they were cut off from 
the Mediterranean, the Saracen had no competitor. As early 
as the eighth century Ceylon was an Arab trading base, and 
when the Portuguese explorers arrived at the end of the 
15th century they found the Arabs still dominating the water 
routes of India and Asia, holding as they had held for seven 
centuries a monopoly of the commerce of the east. 

Of the Mediterranean during the struggle between Chris- 
tian and Saracen a recent English writer makes the following 
suggestive comment: 

"The function of the Mediterranean has thus undergone a 
change. In early times it had been a barrier; later, under the 
Phoenicians, it became a highway, and to the Greeks a defense. 
We find that the Romans made it a basis for sea power and 
subdued all the lands on its margin. With the weakening of 
Rome came a weakening of sea power. The Barbary states 
and Spain became Saracen only because the naval power of 
the eastern empire was not strong enough to> hold the whole 
sea, but neither was the Saracen able to gain supreme con- 
trol. Thus the conditions were the same as in the earlier days 
of the conflict between Rome and Carthage : the Mediterra- 
nean became a moat separating the rivals, thougfi first one and 
then the other had somewhat more control. The islands be- 
came alternately Saracen and Christian. Crete and Sicily were 
held for centuries before they were regained by a Christian 
power." 1 

The victory of 718 saved Constantinople from any further 
peril from the Arabs, but it was again in grave peril, two hun- 
dred years later, when a sudden invasion of Russians in 
great force threatened to accomplish at a stroke what the 
Saracens had failed to do in three great expeditions. The King 
of Kiev, one of the race of Vikings that had fought their way 
into southern Rursia, collected a huge number of ships, vari- 
ously estimated from one to ten thousand, and suddenly ap- 

1 Geography and World Power, Fairgrieve, p. 125. 



84 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

peared in the Bosphorus. Probably there were not more than 
1500 of these vessels all told and they must have been small 
compared with the Christian dromons; nevertheless they pre- 
sented an appalling danger at that moment. The Christian 
fleet was watching Crete, the army was in the east winning 
back territory from the Arabs, and Constantinople lay almost 
defenseless. The great walls could be depended on to' hold 
off a barbarian army, but a fleet was needed to 1 hold the water- 
ways; otherwise the city was doomed. 

In the Horn lay a few antiquated dromons and a few oth- 
ers still on the stocks. To Theophanes the Patrician was 
given this nucleus of a squadron with which to beat back the 
Russians. Desperate and even hopeless as the situation ap- 
peared, he went to work with the greatest energy, patching 
up the old ships, and hurrying the completion of the new. 
Meanwhile the invaders sent raiding parties ashore that har- 
ried the unprotected country districts with every refinement 
of cruelty. In order to make each ship count as much as pos- 
sible as an offensive unit, Theophanes made an innovation by 
fitting out Greek fire tubes on the broadsides as well as in the 
bows. This may be noted as the first appearance of the broad- 
side armament idea, which had to wait six hundred years 
more before it became finally established. 

When the new ships had been completed and the old ones 
made serviceable, Theophanes had exactly fifteen men of war. 
With this handful of vessels, some hardly fit to take the sea, 
he set out from the Horn and boldly attacked the Russian 
fleet that blocked the entrance to the strait. Never was there 
a more forlorn hope. Certainly neither the citizens on the 
walls nor the men on the ships had any expectation of a return. 

What followed would be incredible were it not a matter of 
history. These fifteen ships were immediately swallowed up 
by the huge fleet of the enemy, but under the superb leadership 
of Theophanes each one fought with the fury of desperation. 
They had one hope, the weapon that had twice before saved 
the city, Greek fire. The Russians swarmed alongside only 
to find their ships taking fire with a flame that water would 
not quench. Contempt of their feeble enemy changed soon 



THE EASTERN EMPIRE 85 

to a wild terror. There was but one impulse, to get out of 
reach of the Christians, and the ships struggled to escape. 
Soon the whole Russian fleet was in wild flight with the gal- 
lant fifteen in hot pursuit. Some of these could make but slow 
headway because of their unseaworthiness, but when all was 
over the Russians are said to have lost two-thirds of their 
entire force. The invaders who had been left on shore were 
then swept into the sea by reinforcements that had arrived at 
Constantinople, and not a vestige was left of the Russian in- 
vasion. Once more Greek fire and the Christian navy had 
saved the empire ; and for sheer audacity, crowned with a vic- 
tory of such magnitude, the feat of Theophanes stands un- 
rivaled in history. 

From the tenth century on, Constantinople began to find her 
rivalries in the west. The coronation of Charlemagne in 800 
had marked the final separation of the eastern and the west- 
ern empire. As noted above, the passing of the Saracens gave 
opportunity for the growth of commercial city-states like 
Genoa, Pisa and Venice, and their interests clashed not only 
with one another but also with those of Constantinople. 

The climax came in 1204 when Venice succeeded in di- 
verting the Fourth Crusade to an expedition of vengeance for 
herself, first against the city of Zara and then against Con- 
stantinople. This time the Eastern Empire had no fleet ready 
for defense and the Venetian galleys filled the waters under 
the city walls. Many of these galleys were fitted with a kind 
of flying bridge, a long yard that extended from the mast to 
the top of the wall and stout enough to bear a file of men that 
scrambled by this means to the parapets. After many bloody 
repulses the city was finally captured, and there followed a 
sack that for utter barbarity outdid anything ever perpetrated 
by Arab or Turk. Thus the city that for nearly a thousand 
years had saved Christian civilization was, by a hideous irony 
of fate, taken and sacked by a Crusading army. 

When the second Mohammedan invasion threatened Europe, 
Constantinople, weak on land and impotent by sea, and de- 
serted by the Christian nations of the west, was unable to 



86 A HISTOXtY OF SEA POWER 

put up a strong resistance. At last, in 1453, it was captured 
by the Turks, and became thereafter the capital of the Moslem 
power. Great as this catastrophe was, it cannot compare 
with what would have happened if the city had fallen to the 
Saracen, the Hun, or the Russian during the dark centuries 
when the nations of the west were scarcely in embryo. In the 
15th century they were strong enough to take up the sword 
that Constantinople had dropped and draw the line beyond 
which the Turk was not permitted to go. 

Although it has been the fashion since Gibbon to sneer at 
the Eastern Empire, it must be remembered with respect as the 
last treasure house of the inheritance bequeathed by Rome 
and Greece during the dark centuries of barbarian and Sara- 
cen. Even in its ruin it sent its fugitives westward with the 
manuscripts of a language and literature then little known, 
the Greek, and thereby added greatly to the growing impetus 
of the Renaissance. It is significant also that during its thou- 
sand years of life, as long as it kept its hold on the sea it stood 
firm. When it yielded that, its empire dwindled to a mere 
city fortress whose doom was assured long before it fell. 

REFERENCES 

Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. II., 1913. 

The History of the Saracens, E. Gibbon & S. Ockley. 

History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward 

Gibbon, ed. by J. B. Bury. 
The Byzantine Empire, E. A. Foord, 191 1. 
Military and Religious Life in the Middle Ages, Paul Lacroix, 

1874. 
History of the Later Roman Empire, J. B. Bury, 1889. 
History of the Eastern Roman Empire, J. B. Bury, 1912. 



CHAPTER V 

THE NAVIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES [Continued] : 
VENICE AND THE TURK 

The city-state of Venice owed its origin to the very same 
barbarian invasions that wrecked the old established cities 
of the Italian peninsula. Fugitives from these towns in north- 
ern Italy and the outlying country districts fled to the islets 
and lagoons for shelter from the Hun, the Goth, and the 
Lombard. As the sea was the Venetians' barrier from the in- 
vader, so also it had to be their source of livelihood, and step 
by step through the centuries they built up their commerce 
until they practically controlled the Mediterranean, for trade 
or for war. 

As early as 991 a Doge of Venice made a treaty with the 
Saracens inaugurating a policy held thereafter by Venice till 
the time of Lepanto; namely, to trade with Mohammedans 
rather than fight them. The supreme passion of Venice was to 
make money, as it had been of ancient Phoenicia, and to this 
was subordinated every consideration of race, nationality, and 
religion. The first important step was the conquest of the 
Dalmatian pirates at the beginning of the nth century. This 
meant the Venetian control of the Adriatic. When the Cru- 
sades began, the sea routes to the Holy Land were in the hands 
of the Venetians; indeed it was this fact that made the Cru- 
sades possible. As the carrying and convoying agent of the 
Crusaders, Venice developed greatly in wealth and power. 
With direct access to the Brenner Pass, she became a rich 
distributing center for Eastern goods to northern Europe. In 
all important Levantine cities there was a Venetian quarter, 
Venetians had special trading privileges, and many seaports 
and islands came directly under Venetian rule. 

87 



88 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

This rapid expansion naturally roused the jealousy of oth- 
ers. In 1 171 Venice fought an unsuccessful war with Con- 
stantinople, and yet continued to grow in wealth and power. 
In 1204, as we have seen, Venice avenged herself by diverting 
the Fourth Crusade to the siege and sack of her eastern rival. 
As the reward of that nefarious exploit Venice received the 
greater part of the eastern empire, and became the dominating 
power in the Mediterranean. During the 13th and 14th cen- 



p 




THEATER OF OPERATIONS, VENICE AND THE TURK 



turies, however, she was compelled to fight with her rebellious 
colonies and her new rivals, Genoa and Padua. The wars with 
Genoa very nearly proved fatal to Venice, but just when mat- 
ters seemed most desperate she was saved by a naval victory 
against a Genoese fleet in her own waters. In consequence of 
these wars between Venice and Genoa both were heavy losers 
in wealth and lives; Genoa never recovered from her defeat, 
but her rival showed amazing powers of recuperation. She 
extended her territory in Italy to include the important cities 
of Treviso, Padua, Vicenza, and Verona, and in 1488 ac- 
quired the island of Cyprus in the Levant. At this time the 



VENICE AND THE TURK 89 

Venetian state owned 3300 ships, manned by 36,00x5 men, 
and stood at the height of her power. 

Already, however, a new enemy had appeared who threat- 
ened not only Venice but all Europe. This was the Ottoman 
Turk. The Turks were not like the Arabs, members of 
the Indo-European family, but a race from the eastern bor- 
ders of the Caspian Sea, a branch of the Mongolian stock. 
As these peoples moved south and west they came in contact 
with Mohammedanism and became ardent converts. Even- 
tually they swept over Asia Minor, crossed the Dardanelles, 
took Adrianople, and pushed into' Serbia. Thus, when Con- 
stantinople fell in 1453 ^ na d been for some time a mere 
island of Christianity surrounded by Moslems. Indeed it was 
only the civil wars among the Turks themselves that held them 
back so long from the brilliant career of conquest that charac- 
terized the 15th and early 16th centuries, for these later fol- 
lowers of Mohammed had all the fanaticism of the Saracens. 
After the capture of Constantinople and the transfer of the 
Turkish seat of government to that city, a corps of infantry 
was organized that became the terror of the Christian, world 
— the Janissaries. By a grim irony of Sultan Orkhan, who 
created this body of troops, these men were exclusively of 
Christian parentage, taken as children either in the form .of a 
human tribute levied on the Christian population of Constan- 
tinople, or as captives in the various expeditions in Christian 
territory. The Janissaries were brought up wholly to a mili- 
tary life, they were not permitted to marry, and their lives 
were devoted to fighting for the Crescent. For a long time 
they were invincible in the open field. 

The first half of the 16th century sa^s the Turks in Persia, 
in the east, and at the gates of Vienna in the west. For 
a time they got a foothold in Italy by seizing Otranto. They 
had conquered Egypt and Syria, penetrated Persia, and in 
Arabia gained the support of the Arabs for the Turkish sultan 
as the successor to the Caliphs. Constantinople, therefore, 
became not only the political capital for the Turkish empire 
but the religious center of the whole Moslem world. Moreover, 



90 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

the Arab states on the southern borders of the Mediterranean 
acknowledged the suzerainty of the Turkish ruler. 

This fact was of great importance, for it enabled the Turks 
to become masters of the inland sea. In 1492 the greater part 
of the Moors — the descendants of the Arab conquerors of 
Spain — were expelled from the Peninsula by the conquest of 
Grenada. This event was hailed with joy throughout Chris- 
tendom, but it had an unexpected and terrible consequence. 
Flung back into northern Africa, and filled with hatred be- 
cause of the persecution they had endured, these Moors em- 
barked on a career of piracy directed against Christians. In 
making common cause with the Turks they supplied the fleets 
that the Turkish power needed to carry out its schemes of 
conquest. Apparently the Turks had never taken to salt 
water as the Arabs had done, but in these Moorish pirates 
they found fighters on the sea well worthy to stand compari- 
son with their peerless fighters on land, the Janissaries. Be- 
tween 1492 and 1580, the date of Ali's death, there was a 
period in which the Moorish corsairs were supreme. It pro- 
duced three great leaders, each of whom in turn became the 
terror of the sea : Kheyr ed Din, known as Barbarossa, Dra- 
gut, and Ali. It is a curious fact that the first and third were 
of Christian parentage. 

So long as the Turk invaded Christian territory by land 
alone, the Venetians were unconcerned. They made what 
treaties they could for continuing their trade with communi- 
ties that had fallen into the conquerors' hands. But when 
the Turk began to spread out by sea it was inevitable that he 
must clash with the Venetian, and so there was much fiVht- 
ing. Yet even after a successful naval campaign the emissary 
of Venice was obliged to come before the Sultan, cap in hand, 
to beg trading privileges in Turkish territory. Everything in 
Venetian policy was subordinated to the maintenance of suf- 
ficient friendly relations with the Turk to assure a commercial 
monopoly in the Levant. Hence as the Moslem peril grew 
more and more menacing, Venice remained unwilling to join 
in any united action for the common good of Europe. 

Of course Venice was not alone in this policy. In 1534 



VENICE AND THE TURK 91 

Francis the First, for example, in order to humiliate his rival, 
Charles V, secretly sent word to Barbarossa of the plans be- 
ing made against him. Indeed France showed no interest in 
combating the Turk even at the time when he was at the sum- 
mit of his power. But Venice, as the dominating naval power, 
had the means of checking the Turkish invasion if she had 
chosen to do so. Instead she permitted the control of the 
Mediterranean to slip from her into the hands of the Mos- 
lems with scarcely a blow. 

The leading part in the resistance to the Moslem sea power 
was taken by Spain under Charles V. He had, as admiral of 
the navy, Andrea Doria, the Genoese, the ablest seaman on 
the Christian side. Early in his career he had captured a 
notorious corsair; later in the service of Spain, he defeated 
the Turks at Patras (at the entrance to the Gulf of Corinth), 
and again at the Dardanelles. These successes threatened 
Turkish supremacy on the Mediterranean, and Sultan Soli- 
man "the Magnificent," the ruler under whom the Turkish 
empire reached its zenith, summoned the Algerian corsair Bar- 
barossa and gave him supreme command over all the fleets 
under the Moslem banner. At this time, 1533, Barbarossa 
was seventy-seven years old, but he had lost none of his fire 
or ability. On the occasion of being presented to the Sultan, 
he uttered a saying that might stand as the text for all the 
writings of Mahan : "Sire, he who rules on the sea will shortly 
rule on the land also." 

The following year Barbarossa set out from Constantinople 
with a powerful fleet and proceeded to ravage the coast of 
Italy. He sacked Reggo, burnt and massacred elsewhere on 
the coast without opposition, cast anchor at the mouth of the 
Tiber and if he had chosen could have sacked Rome and taken 
the Pope captive. He then returned to Constantinople with 
1 1 ,000 Christian captives. 

Charles V was roused by this display of corsair power and 
barbarity to collect a force that should put an end to such 
raids. Barbarossa had recently added Tunis to his personal 
domains, and the great expedition of ships and soldiers which 
the emperor assembled was directed against that city. De- 



92 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

spite the warning given by the King of France, Barbarossa 
was unable to oppose the Christian host with a force suffi- 
ciently strong to defend the city. The Christians captured 
it and the chieftain escaped only by a flight along the desert 
to the port of Bona where he had a few galleys in reserve. 
With these he made his way to Algiers before Andrea Doria 
could come up with him. The Christians celebrated the cap- 
ture of Tunis by a massacre of some 30,000 inhabitants and 
returned home, thanking God that at last Barbarossa was 
done for. Indeed, with the loss of his fleet and his newly 
acquired province it seemed as if the great pirate was not 
likely to give much trouble, but the Christians had made the 
mistake of leaving the work only half done. 

In 1537, two years after the fall of Tunis, the Sultan de- 
clared war on Venice. The Turkish fleet, although led by the 
Sultan Soliman himself, was defeated by the Venetians off 
Corfu. Doria, in the service of Charles V, caught and 
burned ten richly laden Turkish merchant ships and then de- 
feated a Turkish squadron. The prestige of the Crescent 
on the sea was badly weakened by these events, but suddenly 
Barbarossa appeared and raided the islands of the Archi- 
pelago and the coasts of the Adriatic with a savagery and 
sweep unmatched by anything in his long career. He ar- 
rived in the Golden Horn, laden with booty and delivered to 
his master, the Sultan, 18,000 captives. 

This exploit changed the complexion of affairs. During 
the winter of 1 537-1 538 the naval yards of Constantinople 
were busy with the preparations for a new fleet which should 
take the offensive against the Venetians and the Christians 
generally. In the spring Barbarossa got out into the Archi- 
pelago and, raiding at will, swept up another batch of prison- 
ers to serve as galley slaves for the new ships. Meanwhile 
the Mediterranean states nerved themselves for a final effort. 
Venice contributed 81 galleys, the Pope sent 36, and Spain, 
30. Later the Emperor sent 50 transports with 10,000 sol- 
diers, and 49 galleys, together with a number of large sailing 
ships. Venice also added 14 sailing ships of war, or "nefs," 
and Doria 22; these formed a special squadron. The Vene- 



VENICE AND THE TURK 93 

tian nefs were headed by Condalmiero in his flagship the 
Galleon of Venice, the most formidable warship in the Medit- 
erranean, and the precursor of a revolution in naval architec- 
ture and naval tactics. 

Although the sailing ship was coming more and more into 
favor because of the discoveries across the Atlantic, the 
galley was the man of war of this period. The dromons of 
the Eastern empire, with their stout build and two banks of 
oars, had given way to a long, narrow vessel with a single 




i6th century galley 

bank of oars which had been developed by men who lived on 
the shores of the sheltered lagoons of the Adriatic. The 
prime characteristic of this type was its mobility. For the 
pirate whose business it was to lie in wait and dash out on 
a merchantman, this quality of mobility — independence of 
wind and speed of movement — was of chief importance. 
Similarly, in order to combat the pirate it was necessary to 
possess the same characteristic. Of course, as in all the days 
of rowed ships, this freedom of movement was limited by 
the physical exhaustion of the rowers. In the ships of Greek 
and Roman days these men had some protection from the 



94 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

weapons of the enemy and from the weather, but in the 16th 
century galley, whether Turkish or Christian, they were 
chained naked to their benches day and night, with practically 
nothing to shelter them from the weather or from the weapons 
of an enemy. So frightful were the hardships of the life 
that the rowers were almost always captives, or felons who 
worked out their sentences on the rowers' bench. An im- 
portant difference between the galley of this period and the 
earlier types of rowed ship is the fact that in the galley there 
was but one row of oars on a side, but these oars were very 
long and manned by four or five men apiece. 

A typical galley was about 180 feet over all with a beam 
of 19 feet and a depth of hold of about 7^4 feet. A single 
deck sloped from about the water line to a structure that ran 
fore and aft amidships, about six feet wide, which served as 
a gangway between forecastle and poop and gave access to 
the hold. The forecastle carried the main battery of guns, 
and was closed in below so as to provide quarters for the fight- 
ing men. The poop had a deck house and a smaller battery; 
this deck also was closed in, furnishing quarters for the officers. 
There were two or three masts, lateen rigged, adorned in 
peace or war with the greatest profusion of banners and 
streamers. Indeed huge sums of money were expended on 
the mere ornament of these war galleys, particularly in the 
elaborate carvings that adorned the stern and prow. 

In the conflict of Christian and Moslem, when Constan- 
tinople was the capital of Christendom, Greek fire on two 
critical occasions routed the Saracens. This substance was 
never understood in western Europe, and for centuries the 
secret was carefully preserved in the eastern capital. In the 
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, it was used by the Mos- 
lem against the Christian, but the discovery of gunpowder 
soon made the earlier substance obsolete. In the 16th 
century cannon had already reached considerable dimensions, 
but in a naval battle between galleys these weapons were not 
used after the first volley or so. The tactics were little dif- 
ferent from those of the day of the trireme, consisting 



VENICE AND THE TURK 95 

simply of ramming, and fighting at close quarters with 
arquebus, bows, pike, and sword. 

Twenty feet from the bows of every galley projected her 
metal beak, and all her guns pointed forward; hence in the 
naval tactics of the period everything turned on a head-on 
attack. The battle line, therefore, was line abreast. For the 
same reasons a commander had to fear an attack on his flank, 
and he maneuvered usually to get at least one flank protected 
by the shore. The battle line in the days of the galley could 
be dressed as accurately as a file of soldiers, but the fighting 
was settled in a close melee in which all formation was lost 
from the moment of collision between the two fleets. 

The Campaign, of Prevesa 

Such were the men of war and the tactics common to Chris- 
tian and corsair during the 16th century. While the Chris- 
tians were slowly collecting their armada, Barbarossa,, with 
a force of 122 galleys, set out to catch his enemy in detail 
if he could. Pirate as he was, the old ruffian had a clear 
strategic grasp of what he might do with a force that was 
inferior to the fleet collecting against him. The Christians 
were to mobilize at Corfu. The Papal squadron had col- 
lected in the Gulf of Arta, and Barbarossa made for it. By 
sheer luck just before he arrived it had moved to the rendez- 
vous. If he had followed it up immediately, he might have 
crushed both the Papal and Venetian contingents, because Doria 
and the Spanish fleet had not yet arrived; but apparently he 
felt uncertain as to just how far off these reinforcements were 
and therefore did not attempt the stroke. Instead, he took up 
a defensive position in the Gulf of Arta, exactly where Antony 
had collected his fleet before the battle of Actium. 

In September (1538) the Christian fleet under Doria left 
Corfu and crossed to the Gulf. Barbarossa had drawn up 
his force in battle array inside the entrance, under the guns 
of the Turkish fortress at Prevesa. Since this entrance is 
obstructed by a bar with too little water for Doria's heavier 
ships, he lay outside. Thus the two fleets faced each other, 



96 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

each waiting for the other to make the next move. For the 
first time in their careers the greatest admiral on the Christian 
side was face to face with the greatest on the Moslem side. 
Both were old men, Doria over seventy and Barbarossa eighty- 
two. The stage was set for another decisive battle on the 
scene of Actium. The town of Prevesa stood on the site of 
Octavius's camp, and again East and West faced each other 
for the mastery of the sea. With the vastly greater strength 
of the Christian fleet, and the known skill of its leader, every- 
thing pointed to an overwhelming victory for the Cross. 
What followed is one of the most amazing stories in history. 

Having the interior lines and the smooth anchorage, Bar- 
barossa had only to watch his enemy go to pieces in the open 
roadstead in trying to maintain a blockade. His officers, how- 
ever, scorned such a policy, and, being appointees of the 
Sultan and far from subordinate in spirit to their chief, they 
were finally able to force his hand and compel him to offer 
battle to the Christians by leaving the security of the gulf 
and the fortress and going out into the open, exactly where 
Doria wanted him. Accordingly on the 27th of September, 
the Turkish fleet sailed out to offer battle. It happened that 
Doria had gone ten miles away to Sessola for anchorage, and 
the Galleon of Venice lay becalmed right in the path of the 
advancing fleet. Condalmiero sent word for help, and Doria 
ordered him to begin fighting, assuring him that he would 
soon be reen forced. 

The Turkish galleys, advancing in a crescent formation, 
soon enveloped the lonely ship. Her captain ordered his crew 
to lie down on her deck while he alone stood, in full armor, 
a target to the host of Moslems who pushed forward in their 
galleys anxious for the honor of capturing this great ship. 
Condalmiero ordered his gunners to hold their fire until the 
enemy were within arquebus range. Then the broadsides of 
the galleon blazed and the surrounding galleys crumpled and 
sank. A single shot weighing 120 pounds sank a galley with 
practically all on board. The signal to retreat was given 
and speedily obeyed. 

Thereafter there were to be no more rushing tactics. Bar- 



VENICE AND THE TURK 97 

barossa organized his galleys in squadrons of twenty, which 
advanced, one after the other, delivered their fire, and retired. 
All the rest of the day, from about noon till sunset, this 
strange conflict between the single galleon and the Turkish 
fleet went on. The ship was cumbered with her fallen spars ; 
she had lost thirteen men killed and forty wounded. The 
losses would have been far greater but for the extraordinarily 
thick sides of the galleon. After sundown the Turkish fleet 
appeared to be drawing up in line for the last assault. On 
the Galleon of Venice there was no thought of surrender; the 
ammunition was almost spent and the men were exhausted 
with their tremendous efforts, but they stood at their posts 
determined to defend their ship to the last man. 

Then, to their astonishment Barbarossa drew off, sending 
some of his galleys to pursue and cut off certain isolated 
Christian units, but leaving the field to the Venetian galleon. 
Meanwhile, during all that long, hot afternoon the great fleet 
of Andrea Doria, instead of pressing forward to the relief 
of the Galleon of Venice and crushing Barbarossa with its 
great superiority in numbers, was going through strange 
parade maneuvers about ten miles away. Doria's explanation 
was that he was trying to decoy Barbarossa out into deeper 
water where the guns of the nefs could be used, but there is 
no other conclusion to be reached than that Doria did not 
want to fight. Fortune that day offered him everything for 
an overwhelming victory, one that might have ranked with 
the decisive actions of the world's history, and he threw it 
away under circumstances peculiarly disgraceful and humili- 
ating. Never did commander in chief so richly deserve to be 
shot on his own deck. The following day as a fair wind 
blew for Corfu, Doria spread sail and retired from the gulf, 
while Barbarossa, roaring with laughter, called on his men 
to witness the cowardice of this Christian admiral. 

The victory lay with Barbarossa. With a greatly inferior 
force he had challenged Doria and attacked. Doria had not 
only declined the challenge but fled back to Corfu. No won- 
der the Sultan ordered the cities of his domain to be illumi- 
nated. Barbarossa' s prizes included two galleys and five nefs, 



98 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

but he, too, had failed in an inexplicable fashion in drawing 
off from the assault on the Galleon of Venice at the end of 
the day's fighting. It is with her, with the gallant Condal- 
miero and his men, that all the honor of the day belongs. 
Nothing in the adventurous 16th century surpasses their 
splendid, disciplined valor on this occasion. 

The astonishing powers of resistance and the deadly effect 
of the broadsides of the Galleon of Venice displayed in a long 
and successful fight against an entire fleet of galleys should 
have had the effect of making a revolution in naval archi- 
tecture fifty years before that change actually occurred. But 
men of war of those days were built after the models of 
Venetian architects, and the latter clung doggedly to the gal- 
ley. They overlooked the great defensive and offensive pow- 
ers of the galleon displayed in this story and saw only the 
fact that she was becalmed and unable to move. 

Doria's failure left conditions in the Mediterranean as 
bad as ever. Barbarossa died at the age of ninety, but one 
of the last acts of his life was to ransom a follower of his, 
Dragut, Pasha of Tripoli, who had served under him at 
Prevesa and, having been captured two years later, served 
four years as a galley slave on the ship of Gian Andrea Doria, 
the grandnephew and heir of Andrea Doria. Dragut soon 
assumed the leadership laid down by Barbarossa, his master, 
fighting first the elder Doria and then his namesake with 
great skill and audacity. For years the Knights of Malta 
had been a thorn in the side of the Moslems who roamed the 
sea, and in 1565 a gigantic effort was made by the Sultan, 
together with his tributaries from the Barbary states, to wipe 
out this naval stronghold. The siege that followed was dis- 
tinguished by the most reckless courage and the most desperate 
fighting on both sides. It extended from May 18 to September 
8, costing the Christians 8000 and the Moslems 30,000 lives. 
In the midst of the siege Dragut himself was slain, and the 
conduct of the siege fell into less capable hands. Finally 
the Turks withdrew. 

The death of Soliman the Magnificent, in 1566, brought to 
the head of the Turkish state a ruler known by the significant 



VENICE AND THE TURK 99 

name, Selim the Drunkard. Weak and debauched as he was, 
nevertheless he aspired to add to the Turkish dominions as 
his father had done. Accordingly, he informed Venice that 
she must evacuate Cyprus. Previous to this time Venice had 
succeeded, by means of heavy bribes to the Sultan's ministers, 
in keeping her hold on this important island, but this policy 
only tempted further arrogance on the part of the Turk. 
Further, the time was propitious for such a stroke because 
Venice was impoverished by bad harvests and the loss of her 
naval arsenal by fire, Spain was occupied in troubles with 
the Moors, and France, torn with civil war, wanted to keep 
peace with the Sultan at any price. During the terrible siege 
of Malta Venice had remained neutral; now that the danger 
came home to her she cried for help, and not unnaturally 
there were those who sneered at her in this crisis and bade 
her save herself. 

The Pope, however, had long been anxious to organize a 
league of Christian peoples to win back the Mediterranean to 
the Cross and draw a line beyond which the Crescent should 
never pass. In this plight of Venice he saw an opportunity, 
because hitherto the persistent neutrality or the unwillingness 
of the Venetians to fight the Turk to the finish had been 
one of the chief obstacles to concerted action. He therefore 
pledged his own resources to Venice and attempted to collect 
allies by the appeal to the Cross. The results were discour- 
aging, but a force of Spanish, Papal, and Venetian galleys 
was finally collected and after endless delays dispatched to 
the scene in the summer of 1570. 

Meanwhile the Turks had been pressing their attack on 
Cyprus and were besieging the city of Nicosia. If the Chris- 
tians had been moved by any united spirit they could have 
relieved Nicosia and struck a heavy blow at the Turkish 
fleet, which lay unready and stripped of its men in the harbor. 
But Gian Doria, who inherited from his great uncle his great 
dislike of Venetians, and who probably had secret instruc- 
tions from his master, Philip II, to help as little as possible, 
succeeded in blocking any vigorous move on the part of the 
other commanders. Finally, after a heated quarrel, he sailed 



100 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

back to Sicily with his entire fleet, and the rest followed. The 
allies had gone no nearer Cyprus than the port of Suda in 
Crete. The whole expedition, therefore, came to nothing. 
In September Nicosia fell to the Turk, who then turned to 
the conquest of Famagusta, the last stronghold of the Vene- 
tians on the island. Bragadino, the commander of the be- 
sieged forces, fought against desperate odds with a courage 
and skill worthy of the best traditions of his native city, hop- 
ing to repulse the Turks until help could arrive. But Doria's 
defection in 1570 decided the fate of the city the following 
year. After fifty-five days of siege, with no resources left, 
Bragadino was compelled, on August 4, 1571, to accept an 
offer of surrender on honorable terms. The Turkish com- 
mander, enraged at the loss of 50,000 men, which Bragadino' s 
stubborn defense had cost, no sooner had the Venetians in 
his power than he massacred officers and men and flayed their 
commander alive. This news did not reach the Christians, 
however, until their second expedition was almost at grips 
with the Turks at Lepanto. 

The Campaign of Lepanto 

Undismayed by the failure of his first attempt, Pope Pius 
had immediately gone to work to reorganize his Holy League. 
He had to overcome the mutual hatred and mistrust that lay 
between Spain and Venice, aggravated by the recent conduct 
of Doria, but neither the Pope nor Venice could do without 
the help of Spain. There was much bickering between the 
envoys in the Papal chambers, and it was not till February, 
1571, that the terms of the new enterprise were agreed upon. 
By this contract no one of the powers represented was to make 
a separate peace with the Porte. The costs were divided into 
six parts, of which Spain undertook three, Venice, two, and 
the Pope, one. Don Juan, the illegitimate brother of Philip 
II, was to be commander in chief. Although only twenty- 
four, this prince had won a military reputation in suppressing 
the Moorish rebellion in Spain, and, having been recognized 
by Philip as a half brother, he had a princely rank that would 



VENICE AND THE TURK 101 

subordinate the claims of all the rival admirals. Finally, the 
rendezvous was appointed at Messina. 

The aged Venetian admiral, Veniero, had been compelled 
by the situation in the east to divide his force into two parts, 
one at Crete, and the other under himself at Corfu. By 
the time he received orders to proceed to the rendezvous, he 
learned that Ali, the corsair king of Algiers, known better by 
his nickname of "Uluch" Ali, was operating at the mouth of 
the Adriatic with a large force. To reach Messina with his 
divided fleet, Veniero ran the risk of being caught by Ali 
and destroyed in detail, but the situation was so critical that 
he took the risk and succeeded in slipping past the corsair 
undiscovered. In permitting this escape, and in fact in allow- 
ing all the other units of the Christian fleet to assemble at 
Messina, Ali missed a golden opportunity to destroy the 
whole force before it ever collected. Instead, he continued 
his ravages on the coasts of the Adriatic, bent only on plunder. 
He carried his raids almost to the lagoons of Venice itself, 
and indeed might have attacked the city had he not been 
hampered by a shortage of men. 

Although the Turks were having their own way, unopposed, 
and the situation was growing daily more critical, the Chris- 
tian fleet was slow in assembling. For a whole month 
Veniero waited in Messina for the arrival of Don Juan and 
the Spanish squadrons. Philip, apparently, used one pretext 
after another to delay the prince, and once on his way Don 
Juan had to tarry at every stage of the journey to witness cere- 
monial fetes held in his honor. Philip acted in good faith as 
far as his preparations went, but he wanted to save his gal- 
leys for use against the Moors of the Barbary coast, which 
was nearer the ports of Spain, and was indifferent to the out- 
come of the quarrel between Venice and the Porte. Un- 
doubtedly Doria and the other Spanish officers were fully in- 
formed of their royal master's desires in this expedition as in 
the one of the year before. They were to avoid battle 
if. they could. 

On August 25 Don Juan arrived at Messina and was joy- 
ously received by the city and the fleet. Nevertheless, it 



102 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

was the 12th of September before the decision was finally 
reached to seek out the Turkish fleet and offer battle. For- 
tunately Don Juan was a high-spirited youth who shared 
none of his brother's half-heartedness ; he went to work to 
organize the discordant elements under his command into as 
much of a unit as he could, and to imbue them with the idea 
of aggressive action. In this spirit he was seconded by thou- 
sands of young nobles and soldiers of fortune from Spain 
and Italy, who had flocked to his standard like the knight 
errants of the age of chivalry, burning to distinguish them- 
selves against the infidel. Among these, oddly enough, was 
a young Spaniard, Cervantes, who was destined in later years 
to laugh chivalry out of Europe by his immortal "Don 
Quixote." 

In order to knit together the three elements, Spanish, Vene- 
tian, and Papal, Don Juan so distributed their forces that no 
single squadron could claim to belong to any one nation. 
As the Venetian galleys lacked men, he put aboard them 
Spanish and Italian infantry. Before leaving Messina, he 
had given every commander written instructions as to his 
cruising station and his place in the battle line. The fighting 
formation was to consist of three squadrons of the line and 
one of reserve. The left wing was to be commanded by the 
Venetian Barbarigo; the center, by Don Juan himself, in the 
flagship Real, with Colonna, the Papal commander on his right 
and Veniero, the Venetian commander, on his left, in their 
respective flagships. The right wing was intrusted to Doria, 
and the reserve, amounting to about thirty galleys, was under 
the Spaniard, Santa Cruz. In front of each squadron of the 
line two Venetian galleasses were to take station in order to 
break up the formation of the Turkish advance. The total 
fighting force consisted of 202 galleys, six galleasses, and 
28,000 infantrymen besides sailors and oarsmen. 

The Venetian galleasses deserve special mention because 
they attracted considerable attention by the part they subse- 
quently played in the action. Sometimes the word was ap- 
plied to any specially large galley, but these represented some- 
thing different from anything in either Christian or Turkish 



VENICE AND THE TURK 103 

fleets. They were an attempt to reach a combination of 
galleon and galley, possessing the bulk, strength, and heavy 
armament of the former, together with the oar propulsion 
of the latter to render them independent of the wind. But like 
most, if not all, compromise types, the galleass was short-lived. 
It was clumsy and slow, being neither one thing nor the other. 
Most of the time on the cruise these galleasses had to be towed 
in order to keep up with the rest of the fleet. It is interesting 
to note that, despite the example of the Galleon of Venice at 
Prevesa, there was not a single galleon in the whole force. 

On September 16 the start from Messina was made. The 
fleet crossed to the opposite shore of the Adriatic, creeping 
along the coast and in the lee of the islands after the manner 
of oar driven vessels that were unable to face a fresh breeze 
or a moderate sea. Delayed by unfavorable winds, it was 
not till October 6 that it arrived at the group of rocky islets 
lying just north of the opening of the Gulf of Corinth, or 
Lepanto, 1 where the Turkish fleet was known to be mobilized. 
Meanwhile trouble had broken out among the Christians. 
Serious fighting had taken place between Venetians and Span- 
iards, and Veniero, without referring the case to Don Juan, 
had hanged a Spanish soldier who had been impudent to him, 
thus enraging the commander in chief. In a word, the vari- 
ous elements were nearly at the point of fighting each other 
before the object of their crusade was even sighted. 

At dawn of the 7th the lookout on the Real sighted the 
van of the Turkish fleet coming out to the attack, and this 
news had a salutary effect. Don Juan called a council of 
war, silenced those like Doria who still counseled avoiding 
battle, and then in a swift sailing vessel went through the 
fleet exhorting officers and men to do their utmost. The 
sacrament was then administered to all, the galley slaves 
freed from their chains, and the standard of the Holy League, 
the figure of the Crucified Savior, was raised to the truck of 
the flagship. 

1 Lepanto is the modern name of Naupaktis, the naval base of Athens 
in the gulf. It has been a Venetian stronghold, but fell to the Turks 
in 1499. The name Lepanto is given to both the town and the gulf. 



104 A HISTOKY OF SEA POWER 

As the Christians streamed down from the straits to meet 
their enemy, they faced a serious peril. The Turks were ad- 
vancing in full array aided by a wind at their backs ; the same 
wind naturally was against the Christians, who had to toil 
at their oars with great labor to make headway. If the wind 
held there was every prospect that the Turks would be able 
to fall upon their enemy before Don Juan could form his 
line of battle. Fortunately, toward noon the wind shifted so 
as to help the Christians and retard the Turks. This shift 
just enabled most of the squadrons to fall into their appointed 
stations before the collision. Two of the galleasses, however, 
were not able to reach their posts in advance of the right 
wing before the melee began, and the right wing itself, though 
it had ample time to take position, kept on its course to the 
south, leaving the rest of the fleet behind. To Turk and 
Christian alike this move on the part of Doria meant treach- 
ery, for which Doria's previous conduct gave ample color, 
but there was no time to draw back or reorganize the line. 

The Turkish force, numbering 222 galleys, swept on to 
the attack, also in three divisions, stretched out in a wide 
crescent. The commander in chief, Ali Pasha, led the center, 
his right was commanded by Sirocco, the Viceroy of Egypt, 
and his left by "Uluch" Ali. This arrangement should have 
brought Ali, the greatest of the Moslem seafighters of his 
day, face to face with Doria, the most celebrated admiral in 
Christendom. The two opposing lines swung together with 
a furious plying of oars and a tumult of shouting. The 
four galleasses stationed well in front of the Christian battle 
line opened an effective fire at close quarters on the foremost 
Turkish galleys as they swept past. In trying to avoid the 
heavy artillery of these floating fortresses, the Turks fell into 
confusion, losing their battle array almost at the very moment 
of contact, and masking the fire of many of their ships. 
This was an important service to the credit of the galleasses, 
but as they were too unwieldy to maneuver readily they seem 
to have taken no further part in the action. 

The first contact took place about noon between Barbarigo's 
and Sirocco's squadrons. The Venetian had planned to rest 



VENICE AND THE TURK 105 

his left flank so close to the shore as to prevent the Turks 
from enveloping it, but Sirocco, who knew the depth of water 
better, was able to pour a stream of galleys between the end 
of Barbarigo's line and the coast so that the Christians at 
this point found themselves attacked in front and rear. For 
a while it looked as if the Turks would win, but the Chris- 
tians fought with the courage of despair. There was no 
semblance of line left; only a melee of ships laid so close to 
each other as to form almost a continuous platform over 
which the righting raged hand to hand. Both the leaders fell. 
Barbarigo was mortally wounded, and Sirocco was killed 
when his flagship was stormed. The loss of the Egyptian 
flagship and commander seemed to decide the struggle at this 
point. The Christian slaves, freed from the rowers' benches, 
were supplied with arms and joined in the fighting with the 
fury of vengeance on their masters. A backward movement 
set in among the Turkish ships; then many headed for the 
shore to escape. 

Meanwhile, shortly after the Christian left had been en- 
gaged the two centers crashed together. Such was the force 
of the impact that the beak of AH Pasha's galley drove as far 
as the fourth rowing bench of the Real. Instantly a fury of 
battle burst forth around the opposing flagships. Attack and 
counter attack between Spanish infantry and Turkish Janis- 
saries swayed back and forth across from one galley to an- 
other amid a terrific uproar. Once the Real was nearly 
taken, but Colonna jammed the bows of his galley alongside 
and saved the situation by a counter attack. On the other 
side of the flagship Veniero was also at one time in grave 
peril but was saved by the timely assistance of his comrades. 
Though wounded in the leg, this veteran of seventy fought 
throughout the action as stoutly as the youngest soldier. 

The prompt action of Colonna turned the tide in the center, 
for after clearing the Turks from the deck of the Real, the 
Christians, now reen forced, made a supreme effort that swept 
the length of Ali Pasha's galley and left the Turkish com- 
mander in chief among the slain. In fighting of this char- 
acter no quarter was given; of the 400 men on the Turkish 



106 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



flagship not one was spared. Don Juan immediately hoisted 
the banner of the League to the masthead of the captured 
ship. This sign of victory broke the spirit of the Turks 
and nerved the Christians to redoubled efforts. As on the 
left wing so in the center the offensive now passed to the allies. 
Thus after two hours' fighting the Turks were already beaten 



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Q ULUCH Ai-» 



BATTLE OF LEPANTO, OCT. 7, 1571 
Formation of the two fleets just before contact, about n a.m. 

on left and center, though fighting still went on hotly in tangled 
and scattered groups of ships. 

On the Christian right, however, the situation was differ- 
ent. Doria had from the beginning left the right center "in 
the air" by sailing away to the south. He explained this 
singular conduct afterwards by saying that he noticed AH 
moving seaward as if to try an enveloping movement round 
the Christians' southern flank, and therefore moved to head 



VENICE AND THE TURK 107 

him off. However plausible this may be, the explanation did 
not satisfy Doria's captains, who obeyed his signals with in- 
dignant rage. At all events Ali had a considerably larger 
force than Doria, and after the latter had drawn away so 
far as to create a wide gap between his own squadron and 
the center, Ali suddenly swung his galleys about in line and 
fell upon the exposed flank, leaving Doria too far away to 
interfere. The Algerian singled out a detached group of 
about fifteen galleys, among which was the flagship of the 
Knights of Malta. No Christian flag was so hated as the 
banner of this Order, and the Turks fell upon these ships 
with shouts of triumph. One after another was taken and 
it began to look as if Ali would soon roll up the entire flank 
and pluck victory from defeat. 

But Santa Cruz, who was still laboring through the straits 
when the battle began, was now in a position to help. After 
an hour's fighting with all the advantage on Ali's side, Santa 
Cruz arrived with his reserve squadron and turned the scale. 
By this time, too, Doria managed to reach the scene with a 
part of his squadron. Thus Ali found himself outnumbered 
and in danger of capture. Signaling retreat, he collected a 
number of his galleys and, boldly steering through the field 
of battle, escaped to lay at the feet of the Sultan the captured 
flag of the Knights of Malta. Some thirty-five others of his 
force made their way safely back to Lepanto. 

The fighting did not end till evening. By that time the 
Christians had taken 117 galleys and 20 galleons, and sunk or 
burnt some fifty other ships of various sorts. Ten thousand 
Turks were captured and many thousands of Christian slaves 
rescued. The Christians lost 7500 men; the Turks, about 
80,000. It was an overwhelming victory. 

As far as the tactics go, Lepanto was, like Salamis, an 
infantry battle on floating platforms. It was fought and 
won by the picked infantrymen of Spain and Italy; the 
day of seamanship had not yet arrived. Of the conduct of 
the most distinguished admiral on the Christian side, Gian 
Andrea Doria, little justification can be found. Even if we 
accept his excuse at its face value, the event proved his folly. 



108 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

It is strange that in this, the supreme victory of the Cross 
over the Crescent on the sea, a Doria should have tarnished 
his reputation so foully, even as his great-uncle Andrea had 
tarnished his in the battle of Prevesa. It seems as if in both, 
as Genoese, the hatred of Venice extinguished every other con- 
sideration of loyalty to Christendom. 

What were the consequences of Lepanto, and in what sense 
can it be called a decisive battle ? The question at first seems 
baffling. Overwhelming as was the defeat of the Turks, 
Ali had another fleet ready the next spring and was soon 
ravaging the seas again. Twice there came an opportunity 
for the two fleets to meet for another battle, but Ali declined 
the challenge. After Lepanto he seemed unwilling, without 
a great superiority, to risk another close action and contented 
himself with a "fleet in being." In this new attitude toward 
the Christians lies the hint to the answer. The significance 
of Lepanto lies in its moral effect. Never before had the 
Turkish fleet been so decisively beaten in a pitched battle. 
The fame of Lepanto rang through Europe and broke the 
legend of Turkish invincibility on the sea. 

The material results, it must be admitted, were worse than 
nothing at the time. In 1573 Don Juan was amazed and 
infuriated to learn that Venice, contrary to the terms of the 
Holy League, had secretly arranged a separate peace with 
the Sultan. The terms she accepted were those of a beaten 
combatant Venice agreed to the loss of Cyprus, paid an in- 
demnity of 300,000 ducats, trebled her tribute for the use of 
Zante as a trading post, and restored to the Turk all cap- 
tures made on the Albanian and Dalmatian coast. Apparent- 
ly the Venetian had to have his trade at any price, including 
honor. At this news Don Juan tore down the standard of the 
allies and raised the flag of Castile and Aragon. In two 
years and after a brilliant victory, the eternal Holy League, 
which was pledged to last forever, fell* in pieces. 

As for Venice, her ignoble policy brought her little benefit. 
She steadily declined thereafter as a commercial and naval 
power. Her old markets were in the grip of the Turk, and 
the new discoveries of ocean routes to the east — beyond the 



VENICE AND THE TURK 109 

reach of the Moslem, — diverted the course of trade away 
from the Mediterranean, which became, more and more, a 
mere backwater of the world's commerce. In fact, it was 
not until the cutting of the Suez Canal that the inland sea re- 
gained its old time importance. 

In the long unsuccessful struggle of Christian against the 
Turk Venice must bear the chief blame, for she had the 
means and the opportunity to conquer if she had chosen the 
better part. And yet the story of this chapter shows also that 
the rest of Christendom was not blameless. If Christians in 
the much extolled Age of Faith had shown as much unity of 
spirit as the Infidels, the rule of the Turk would not have 
paralyzed Greece, the Balkans, the islands of the TEgean, and 
the coasts of Asia Minor for nearly five centuries. 

REFERENCES 

La Guerre de Chypre et la Bataille de Lepante, J. P. Jurien de 

la Graviere, 1888. 
By the same author, Doria et Barberousse, 1886. 
History of the Reign of Philip the Second (vol. III.), W. H. 

Prescott, 1858. 
Sea Wolves of the Mediterranean, E. Hamilton Currey. This 

contains a full bibliography. 
The Navy of Venice, Alethea Wiel, 1910. 
The Eastern Question (chap. V.), J. A. R. Marriott, 1917. 
Barbary Corsairs, Story of the Nations Series, Lane-Poole, 1890. 
Drake and the Tudor Navy (Introduction), J. S. Corbett, 1898. 
Geography and World Power, James Fairgrieve, 1917. 



CHAPTER VI 
OPENING THE OCEAN ROUTES 

I. PORTUGAL AND THE NEW ROUTE TO INDIA 

From the days of the Phoenicians to the close of the 15th 
century, all trade between Europe and Asia crossed the land 
barrier east of the Mediterranean. Delivered by Moham- 
medan vessels at the head of the Persian Gulf or the ports 
of the Red Sea, merchandise followed thence the caravan 
routes across Arabia or Egypt to the Mediterranean, quadru- 
pling in value in the transit. Intercourse between East and 
West, active under the Romans, was again stimulated by the 
crusades and by Venetian traders, until in the 14th and the 
15th centuries the dyes, spices, perfumes, cottons, muslins, 
silks, and jewels of the Orient were in demand throughout 
the western world. This assurance of a ready market and 
large profits, combined with the capture of Constantinople by 
the Turks (1453), their piratical attacks in the Mediterranean 
which continued unchecked until Lepanto, and their final bar- 
ring of all trade routes through the Levant, revived among 
nations of western Europe the old legends of all-water routes 
to Asia, either around Africa or directly westward across the 
unknown sea. 

With the opening of ocean routes and the discovery of 
America, a rivalry in world trade and colonial expansion set 
in which has continued increasingly down to the present time, 
forming a dominant element in the foreign policies of mari- 
time nations and a primary motive for the possession and use 
of navies. The development of overseas trade, involving the 
factors of merchant shipping, navies, and control of the seas, 
is thus an integral part of the history of sea power. The 
great voyages of discovery are also not to be disregarded, 

no 



OPENING THE OCEAN ROUTES 111 

supplying as they did the basis for colonial claims, and illus- 
trating at the same time the progress of nautical science and 
geographical knowledge. 

The art of navigation, though still crude, had by the 15th 
century so advanced that the sailor was no longer compelled 
to skirt the shore, with only rare ventures across open stretches 
of sea. The use of the compass, originating in China, had 




CROSS-STAFF 



been learned from the Arabs by the crusaders, and is first 
mentioned in Europe towards the close of the 12th century. 
An Italian in England, describing a visit to the philosopher 
Roger Bacon in 1258, writes as follows : "Among other things 
he showed me an ugly black stone called a magnet . . . upon 
which, if a needle be rubbed and afterward fastened to a 
straw so that it shall float upon the water, the needle will in- 
stantly turn toward the pole-star; though the night be never 
so dark, yet shall the mariner be able by the help of this 
needle to steer his course aright. But no master-mariner," 
he adds, "dares to use it lest he should fall under the impu- 
tation of being a magician." 1 By the end of the 13th century 

1 Dante's tutor Brunetto Latini, quoted in The Discovery of America, 
Fiske, Vol. I, p. 314. 



112 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

the compass was coming into general use ; and when Columbus 
sailed he had an instrument divided as in later times into 
360 degrees and 32 points, as well as a quadrant, sea-astrolabe, 
and other nautical devices. The astrolabe, an instrument for 
determining latitude by measuring the altitude of the sun or 
other heavenly body, was suspended from the finger by a ring 
and held upright at noon till the shadow of the sun passed the 
sights. The cross-staff, more frequently used for the same 
purpose by sailors of the time, was a simpler affair less affected 
by the ship's roll ; it was held with the lower end of the cross- 
piece level with the horizon and the upper adjusted to a point 
on a line between the eye of the observer and the sun at the 
zenith. By these various means the sailor could steer a fixed 
course and determine latitude. He had, however, as yet no 
trustworthy means of reckoning longitude and no accurate 
gauge of distance traveled. The log-line was not invented 
until the 17th century, and accurate chronometers for deter- 
mining longitude did not come into use until still later. A 
common practice of navigators, adopted by Columbus, was to 
steer first north or south along the coast and then due west on 
the parallel thought to lead to the destination sought. 

With the revival of classical learning in the Renaissance,, 
geographical theories also became less wildly imaginative than 
in the medieval period, the charts of which, though beautifully 
colored and highly decorated with fauna and flora, show no 
such accurate knowledge even of the old world as do' those 
of the great geographer Ptolemy, who lived a thousand years 
before. Ptolemy (200 A.D.), in company with the majority 
of learned men since Aristotle, had declared the earth to 
be round and had even estimated its circumference with sub- 
stantial accuracy, though he had misled later students by 
picturing the Indian Ocean as completely surrounded by 
Africa, which he conceived to extend indefinitely southward 
and join Asia on the southeast, leaving no sea-route open 
from the Atlantic. There was another body of opinion of 
long standing, however, which outlined Africa much as it 
actually is. Friar Roger Bacon, whose interest in the com- 
pass has already been mentioned, collected statements of class- 



OPENING THE OCEAN ROUTES 113 




114 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

ical authorities and other evidence to show that Asia could 
be reached by sailing directly westward, and that the distance 
was not great; and this material was published in Paris in a 
popular Imago Mundi of 1 510. In general, the best geo- 
graphical knowledge of the period, though it underestimated 
the distance from Europe westward to Asia and was com- 
pletely ignorant of the vast continents lying between, gave 
support to the theories which the voyages of Diaz, Vasco da 
Gama, and Columbus magnificently proved true. 

When the best sailors of the time were Italians, and when 
astronomical and other scientific knowledge of use in naviga- 
tion was largely monopolized by Arabs and Jews, it seems 
strange that the isolated and hitherto insignificant country 
of Portugal should have taken, and for a century or more 
maintained primacy in the great epoch of geographical dis- 
covery. The fact is explained, not so much by her proximity 
to the African coast and the outlying islands in the Atlantic, 
as by the energetic and well-directed patronage which Prince 
Henry the Navigator (1394-1460) extended to voyages of 
exploration and to the development of every branch of nauti- 
cal art. The third son of John the Great of Portugal, and 
a nephew on his mother's side of Henry IV of England, the 
prince in 141 5 led an armada to the capture of Ceuta from 
the Moors, and thereafter, as governor of the conquered 
territory and of the southern province of Portugal, settled 
at Saigres near Cape St. Vincent. On this promontory, al- 
most at the western verge of the known world, Henry founded 
a city, Villa do Ifrante, erected an observatory on the cliff, 
and gathered round him the best sailors, geographers and 
astronomers of his age. 

Under this intelligent stimulus, Portuguese navigators 
within a century rounded the Cape of Good Hope, opened 
the sea route to the Indies, discovered Brazil, circumnavigated 
the globe, and made Portugal the richest nation in Europe, 
with a great colonial empire and claims to dominion over 
half the seas of the world. Portuguese ships carried her 
flag from Labrador (which reveals its discoverers in its 
name) and Nova Zembla to the Malay Archipelago and Japan. 



OPENING THE OCEAN ROUTES 115 







116 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

It is characteristic of the crusading spirit of the age that 
Prince Henry's first ventures down the African coast were 
in pursuance of a vague plan to ascend one of the African 
rivers and unite with the legendary Christian monarch Prester 
John (Presbyter or Bishop John, whose realm was then sup- 
posed to be located in Abyssinia) in a campaign against the 
Turk. But crusading zeal changed to dreams of wealth when 
his ships returned from the Senegal coast between 1540 and 
1545 with elephants' tusks, gold, and negro slaves. The Gold 
Coast was already reached; the fabled dangers of equatorial 
waters — serpent rocks, whirlpools, liquid sun's rays and boil- 
ing rivers — were soon proved unreal; and before 1580 the 
coast well beyond the Congo was known. 

The continental limits of Africa to southward, long 
clearly surmised, were verified by the voyage of Bartolomeo 
Diaz, in 1485. Diaz rounded the cape, sailed northward 
some 200 miles, and then, troubled by food shortage and' 
heavy weather, turned backward. But he had blazed the 
trail. The cape he called Tormento (tempestuous) was re- 
named by his sovereign, Joao II, Cape Bon Esperanto — the 
Cape of Good Hope. The Florentine professor Politian wrote 
to congratulate the king upon opening to Christianity ''new- 
lands, new seas, new worlds, dragged from secular dark- 
ness into the light of day." 

It was not until ten years later that Vasco da Gama set 
out to complete the work of Diaz and establish contact be- 
tween east and west. The contour of the African coast was 
now so well understood and the art of navigation so advanced 
that Vasco could steer a direct course across the open sea 
from the Cape Verde Islands to the southern extremity of 
Africa, a distance of 3770 miles (more than a thousand miles 
greater than that of Columbus' voyage from the Canaries to 
the Bahamas), which he covered in one hundred days. After 
touching at Mozambique, he caught the steady monsoon winds 
for Calicut, on the western coast of the peninsula of India, then 
a great entrepot where Mohammedan and Chinese fleets met 
each year to exchange wares. Thwarted here by the in- 
trigues of Mohammedan traders, who were quick to realize 



OPENING THE OCEAN ROUTES 117 

the danger threatening their commercial monopoly, he moved 
on to Cananore, a port further south along the coast, took 
cargo, and set sail for home, reaching the Azores in August 
oi 1499, with 55 of his original complement of 148 men. 
They came back, in the picturesque words of the Admiral, 
"With the pumps in their hands and the Virgin Mary in 
their mouths," completing a total voyage of 13,000 miles. 
The profits are said to have been sixty-fold. 

The ease with which in the next two decades Portugal 
extended and consolidated her conquest of eastern trade is 
readily accounted for. She was dependent indeed solely upon 
sea communications, over a distance so great as to make 
the task seem almost impossible. But the craft of the east 
were frail in construction and built for commerce rather than 
for warfare. The Chinese junks that came to India are 
described as immense in size, with large cabins for the officers 
and their families, vegetable gardens growing on board, and 
crews of as many as a thousand men; but they had sails 
of matted reed that could not be lowered, and their timbers 
were loosely fastened together with pegs and withes. The 
Arab ships, according to Marco Polo, were also built with- 
out the use of nails. Like the Portuguese themselves, the 
Arab or Mohammedan merchants belonged to a race of alien 
invaders, little liked by the native princes who retained petty 
sovereignties along the coast. But the real secret of Portu- 
guese success lay in the fact that their rivals were 
traders rather than fighters, who had enjoyed a peaceful 
monopoly for centuries, and who could expect little aid from 
their own countries harassed by the Turk. The Portuguese 
on the other hand inherited the traditions of Mediterranean 
seamanship and warfare, and, above all, were engaged in a 
great national enterprise, led by the best men in the land, 
with enthusiastic government support. 

After Vasco's return, fleets were sent out each year, to 
open the Indian ports by either force or diplomacy, destroy 
Moslem merchant vessels, and establish factories and garrisons. 
In 1505 Francisco de Almeida set sail with the largest fleet 
as yet fitted out (sixteen ships and sixteen caravels), an ap- 



118 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

pointment as Viceroy of Cochin, Cananore, and Quilon, and 
supreme authority from the Cape to the Malay Peninsula. 
Almeida in the next four years defeated the Mohammedan 
traders, who with the aid of Egypt had by this time organized 
to protect themselves, in a series of naval engagements, cul- 
minating on February 3, 1509, in the decisive battle of Diu. 

Mir Hussain, Admiral of the Gran Soldan of Egypt and 
commander in chief of the Mohammedan fleet in this battle, 
anchored his main force of more than a hundred ships in 
the mouth of the channel between the island of Diu and the 
mainland, designing to fall back before the Portuguese at- 
tack towards the island, where he could secure the aid of 
shore batteries and a swarm of 300 or more foists and other 
small craft in the harbor. Almeida had only 19 ships and 
1300 men, but against his vigorous attack the flimsy vessels 
of the east were of little value. The battle was fought at 
close quarters in the old Mediterranean style, with saber, cut- 
lass, and culverin; ramming, grappling, and boarding. Be- 
fore nightfall Almeida had won. This victory ensured Por- 
tugal's commercial control in the eastern seas. 

Alfonso de Albuquerque, greatest of the Portuguese con- 
quistadores, succeeded Almeida in 1509. Establishing head- 
quarters in a central position at Goa, he sent a fleet eastward 
to Malacca, where he set up a fort and factory, and later 
fitted out expeditions against Ormuz and Aden, the two 
strongholds protecting respectively the entrances to the Per- 
sian Gulf and the Red Sea. The attack on Aden failed, but 
Ormuz fell in 15 15. Albuquerque died in the same year and 
was buried in his capital at Goa. His successor opened trade 
and founded factories in Ceylon. In 1 526 a trading post was 
established at Hugh, near the mouth of the Ganges. Ormuz 
became a center for the Persian trade, Malacca for trade with 
Java, Sumatra, and the Spice Islands. A Portuguese envoy, 
Fernam de Andrada, reached Canton in 15 17 — in the first 
European ship to enter Chinese waters — and Pekin three years 
later. Another adventurer named Mendez Pinto spent years 
in China and in 1548 established a factory near Yokohama, 
Japan. Brazil, where a squadron under Cabral had touched 



OPENING THE OCEAN ROUTES 119 

as early as 1502, was by 1550 a prosperous colony, and in 
later centuries a chief source of wealth. Mozambique, Mom- 
bassa, and Melinda, on the southeastern coast of Africa, were 
taken and fortified as intermediate bases to protect the route 
to Asia. The muslins of Bengal, the calicoes of Calicut, the 
spices from the islands, the pepper of Malabar, the teas and 
silks of China and Japan, now found their way by direct ocean 
passage to the Lisbon quays. 

A few strips along the African coast, tenuously held by 
sufferance of the great powers, and bits of territory at Goa, 
Daman, and Diu in India, are the twentieth century remnants 
of Portugal's colonial empire. The greater part of it fell 
away between 1580 and 1640, when Portugal was under 
Spanish rule. But her own system of colonial administra- 
tion, or rather exploitation, was if possible worse than Spain's. 
Her scanty resources of man power were exhausted in colo- 
nial warfare. The expulsion of Protestants and Jews de- 
prived her of elements in her population that might have 
known how to utilize wealth from the colonies to build up 
home trade and industries. Her situation was too distant 
from the European markets ; and the raw materials landed at 
Lisbon were transshipped in Dutch bottoms for Amsterdam 
and Antwerp, which became the true centers of manufacturing 
and exchange. Cervantes, in 1607, could still speak of Lis- 
bon as the greatest city in Europe, 1 but her greatness was 
already decaying; and her fate was sealed when Philip of 
Spain closed her ports to Dutch shipping, and Dutch ships 
themselves set sail for the east. 

But the period of Portugal maritime ascendancy cannot be 
left without recording, even if in barest outline, the circum- 
navigation of the globe by Fernao da Magalhaes, or Magellan, 
who, though he made this last voyage of his under the Span- 
ish flag, was Portuguese by birth and had proved his courage 
and iron resolution under Almeida and Albuquerque in Por- 
tugal's eastern campaigns. Seeking a westward passage to 
the Spice Islands, the five vessels of 75 to 100 tons com- 
posing his squadron cleared the mouth of the Guadalquivir 

1 Persiles and Sigismuda, III, i. 



120 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

on September 20, 15 19. They established winter quarters in 
the last of March at Port St. Julian on the coast of Patagonia. 
Here, on Easter Sunday, three of his Spanish captains muti- 
nied. Magellan promptly threw a boat's crew armed with 
cutlasses aboard one of the mutinous ships, killed the leader, 
and overcame the unruly element in the crew. The two other 
ships he forced to surrender within 24 hours. One of the 
guilty captains was beheaded and the other marooned on the 
coast when the expedition left in September. Five weeks 
were now spent in the labyrinths of the strait which has 
since borne the leader's name. "When the capftayne Magali- 
anes," so runs the contemporary English translation of the 
story of the voyage, "was past the strayght and sawe the way 
open to the other mayne sea, he was so gladde thereof that 
for joy the teares fell from his eyes." 

He had sworn he would go on if he had to eat the leather 
from the ships' yards. With three vessels — one had been 
shipwrecked in the preceding winter and the other deserted 
in the straits — they set out across the vast unknown expanse 
of the Pacific. "In three monethes and xx dayes they sailed 
foure thousande leagues in one goulfe by the sayde sea called 
Pacificum. . . . And havying in this tyme consumed all their 
bysket and other vyttayles, they fell into such necessitie that 
they were inforced to eate the pouder that remayned thereof 
being now full of woormes. . . . Theyre freshe water was 
also putryfyed and become yellow. They dyd eate skynnes 
and pieces of lether which were foulded about certeyne great 
ropes of the shyps." On March 6, 1521, they reached the 
Ladrones, and ten days later, the Philippines, even these 
islands having never before been visited by Europeans. Here 
the leader was killed in a conflict with the natives. One ship 
was now abandoned, and another was later captured by the 
Portuguese. Of the five ships that had left Spain with 280 
men, a single vessel, "with tackle worn and weather-beaten 
yards," and 18 gaunt survivors reached home. "It has not," 
writes the historian John Fiske of this voyage, "the unique 
historic position of the first voyage of Columbus, which 
brought together two streams of human life that had been 



OPENING THE OCEAN ROUTES 121 

disjoined since the glacial period. But as an achievement 
in ocean navigation that voyage of Columbus sinks into in- 
significance beside it. . . . When we consider the frailness 
of the ships, the immeasurable extent of the unknown, the 
mutinies that were prevented or quelled, and the hardships 
that were endured, we can have no hesitation in speaking of 
Magellan as the prince of navigators." 1 

2. SPAIN AND THE NEW WORLD 

It is generally taken for granted that the great movement 
of the Renaissance, which spread through western Europe in 
the 15th and the 16th centuries, quickening men's interest 
in the world about them rather than the world to come, and 
inspiring them with an eagerness and a confident belief in 
their own power to explore its hidden secrets, was among 
the forces which brought about the great geographical dis- 
coveries of the period. Its influence in this direction is evi- 
dent enough in England and elsewhere later on; but, judging 
by the difficulties of Columbus in securing support, it was 
not in his time potent with those in control of government 
policy and government funds. The Italian navigator John 
Cabot and his son Sebastian made their voyages from Eng- 
land in 1498 and 1500 with very feeble support from Henry 
VII, though it was upon their discoveries that England later 
based her American claims. Even in Spain there seems to 
have been little eagerness to emulate the methods by which 
her neighbor Portugal had so rapidly risen to wealth and 
power. 

But the influence of revived classical information on geo- 
graphical matters was keenly felt; and the idea of a direct 
westerly passage to India was suggested, not only by Portu- 
gal's monopoly of the Cape route, but by classical authority, 
generally accepted by the best geographers of the time. The 
Imago Mundi of 1410, already mentioned, embodying Roger 
Bacon's arguments that the Atlantic washed the shores of 
Asia and that the voyage thither was not long, was a book 
'The Discovery of America, Vol. II, p. 210. 



122 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

carefully studied by Columbus. Paul Toscanelli, a Floren- 
tine physicist and astronomer, adopting and developing this 
theory, sent in 1474 to Alfonso V of Portugal a map of the 
world in which he demonstrated the possibilities of the west- 
ern route. The distance round the earth at the equator he 
estimated almost exactly to be 24,780 statute miles, and in the 
latitude of Lisbon 19,500 miles; but he so exaggerated the 
extent of Europe and Asia as to reduce the distance between 
them by an Atlantic voyage to about 6500 miles, putting the 
east coast of China in about the longitude of Oregon. This 
distance he still further shortened by locating CipangO' 
(Japan) far to the eastward of Asia, in about the latitude 
of the Canary Islands and distant from them only 3250 miles. 

With all these opinions Columbus was familiar, for the list 
of his library and the annotations still preserved in his own 
handwriting, show that he was not an ignorant sailor, nor yet 
a wild visionary, but prepared by closest study for the task 
to which he gave his later years. His earlier career, on the 
other hand, had supplied him with abundant practical knowl- 
edge. Born in Genoa, a mother city of great seamen, prob- 
ably in the year 1436, he had received a fair education in 
Latin, geography, astronomy, drafting, and other subjects' 
useful to the master-mariner of those days. He had sailed 
the Mediterranean, and prior to his great adventure, had been 
as far north as Iceland, and on many voyages down the African 
coast. Following his brother Bartholomew, who was a map- 
maker in the Portuguese service, he came about 1470 to 
Lisbon, even then a center of geographical knowledge and 
maritime activity. Probably as early as this time the idea of 
a western voyage was in his mind. 

Skepticism may account for Portugal's failure to listen to 
his proposals; and her interest was already centered in the 
route around Africa under her exclusive control. The tale 
of his years of search for assistance is well known. Indeed, 
while the fame of Columbus rests rightly enough upon his 
discovery of a new world, of whose existence he had never 
dreamed and which he never admitted in his lifetime, his 
greatness is best shown by his faith in his vision, and the 



OPENING THE OCEAN ROUTES 128 

steadfast energy and fortitude with which he pushed towards 
its practical accomplishment, during years of vain supplica- 
tion, and amid the trials of the voyage itself. He had actually 
left Granada, when Isabella of Spain at last agreed to support 
his venture. In the contract later drawn up he drove a good 
bargain, contingent always upon success ; he was to be admiral 
and viceroy of islands and continents discovered and their sur- 
rounding waters, with control of trading privileges and a 
tenth part of the wealth of all kinds derived. 

With the explorations of Columbus on his first and his three 
later voyages (in 1496, 1498, and 1502) we are less concerned 
than with the first voyage itself as an illustration of the 
problems and dangers faced by the navigator of the time, 
and with the effect of the discovery of the new world upon 
Spain's rise as a sea power. The three caravels in which he 
sailed were typical craft of the period. The Santa Maria, 
the largest, was like the other two, a single-decked, lateen- 
rigged, three-masted vessel, with a length of about 90 feet, 
beam of about 20, and a maximum speed of perhaps 6y 2 knots 
an hour. She was of 100 tons burden and carried 52 men. 
The Pinta was somewhat smaller. The Nina (Baby) was a 
tiny, half-decked vessel of 40 tons. Heavily timbered and 
seaworthy enough, the three caravels were short provisioned 
and manned in part from the rakings of the Palos jail. 

Leaving Palos August 3, 1492, Columbus went first to the 
Canaries, and thence turned his prow directly westward, be-< 
lieving that he was on the parallel that touched the northern 
end of Japan. By a reckoning even more optimistic than 
Toscanelli's, he estimated the distance thither to be only 2500 
miles. Thence he would sail to Quinsay (Hang Chow), the 
ancient capital of China, and deliver the letter he carried to the 
Khan of Cathay. The northeast trade winds bore them stead- 
ily westward, raising in the minds of the already fear-stricken 
sailors the certainty that against these head winds they could 
never beat back. At last they entered the vast expanse of the 
Sargasso Sea, six times as large as France, where they lay for 
a week almost becalmed, amid tangled masses of floating sea- 
weeds. To add to their perplexities, they had passed the line 



124 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

of no variation, and the needle now swung to the left of the 
pole-star instead of the right. On the last day of the outward 
voyage they were 2300 miles to the westward according to 
the information Columbus shared with his officers and men; 
according to his secret log they were 2700 miles from the 
Canaries, and well beyond the point where he had expected 
to strike the islands of the Asiatic coast. The mutinous and 




FLAGSHIP OF COLUMBUS 



panic-stricken spirit of his subordinates, the uncertainty of 
Columbus himself, turned to rejoicing when at 2 :oo A.M. of 
Friday, October 12, a sailor on the Pinta sighted the little 
island of the Bahamas, which, since the time of the Vikings, 
was the first land sighted by white men in the new world. 

The three vessels cruised southward, in the belief, expressed 
by the name Indian which they gave the natives, that they 
were in the archipelago east of Asia. Skirting the northern 
coast of Cuba and Hayti, they sought for traces of gold, and 



OPENING THE OCEAN ROUTES 125 

information as to the way to the mainland. The Santa 
Maria was wrecked on Christmas Day; the Pint a became 
separated; Columbus returned in the little Nina, putting in 
first at the Tagus, and reaching Palos on March 15, 1493. 

Though his voyage gave no immediate prospect of im- 
mense profits, yet it was the general belief that he had reached 
Asia, and by a route three times as short as that by the Cape 
of Good Hope. The Spanish court celebrated his return with, 
rejoicing. Appealing to the Pope, at this time the Spaniard 
Rodrigo Borgia, King Ferdinand lost no time in securing holy 
sanction for his gains. A Papal bull of May 3, 1493, con * 
ferred upon Spain title to all lands discovered or yet to be 
discovered in the western ocean. Another on the day follow-, 
ing divided the claims of Spain and Portugal by a line run- 
ning north and south "100 leagues west of the Azores and 
the Cape Verde Islands" (an obscure statement in view of the 
fact that the Cape Verdes lie considerably to the westward 
of the other group), and granted to Spain a monopoly of 
commerce in the waters "west and south" (again an obscure 
phrase) of this line, so that no other nation could trade with- 
out license from the power in control. This was the extraor- 
dinary Papal decree dividing the waters of the world. 
Small wonder that the French king, Francis I, remarked that 
he refused to recognize the title of the claimants till they 
could produce the will of Father Adam, making them universal 
heirs; or that Elizabeth, when a century later England be- 
came interested in world trade, disputed a division contrary 
not only to common sense and treaties but to "the law of 
nations." The Papal decree, intended merely to settle the 
differences of the two Catholic states, gave rise to endless dis- 
putes and preposterous claims. 

The treaty of Tordesillas ( 1494) between Spain and Por- 
tugal fixed the line of demarcation more definitely, 370 miles 
west of the Cape Verde Islands, giving Portugal the Brazilian 
coast, and by an additional clause it made illegitimate trade 
a crime punishable by death. Another agreement in 1529 
extended the line around to the Eastern Hemisphere, 17 de- 
grees east of the Moluccas, which, if Spain had abided by it, 



126 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

would have excluded her from the Philippines. After Por- 
tugal fell under Spanish rule in 1580, Spain could claim 
dominion over all the southern seas. 

The enthusiasm and confident expectation with which Spain 
set out to exploit the discoveries of Columbus's first voyage 
changed to disappointment when subsequent explorations re- 
vealed lands of continental dimensions to be sure, but popu- 
lated by ignorant savages, with no thoroughfare to the ancient 




CHART OF A.D. 1589 
Showing Papal line of Demarcation 

civilization and wealth of the East, and no promise of a 
solid, lucrative commerce such as Portugal had gained. 
Mines were opened in the West Indies, but it was not until 
the conquest of Mexico by Cortez (1518-1521) laid open the 
accumulated wealth of seven centuries that Spain had definite 
assurance of the treasure which was to pour out of America 
in a steadily increasing stream. The first two vessels laden 
with Mexican treasure returned in 1522. Ten years later the 
exploration and conquest of Peru by Pizarro trebled the in- 
flux of silver and gold. The silver mines of Europe were 
abandoned. The Emperor Charles, as Francis I said, could 



OPENING THE OCEAN ROUTES 127 

fight his European campaigns on the wealth of the Indies 
alone. 

But between Spain and her "sinews of war" lay 3000 miles 
of ocean. To hold the colonies themselves, to guard the 
plate fleets against French, Dutch, and English raiders, to 
protect her own coastline and maintain communications with 
her possessions in Italy and the Low Countries, to wage war 
against the Turk in the Mediterranean, Spain felt the need of 
a navy. Indeed, in view of these varied motives for maritime 
strength, it is surprising that Spain depended so largely on 
impressed merchant vessels, and had made only the begin- 
nings of a royal navy at the time of the Grand Armada. 1 
Not primarily a nation of traders or sailors, she had, by 
grudging assistance to the greatest of sea explorers, fallen 
into a rich colonial empire, to secure and make the most of 
which called for sea power. 

It is possible, however, to lay undue stress on the factor 
just mentioned in accounting for both the rise and the decay of 
Spain. Her ascendancy in Europe in the 16th century was 
due chiefly to the immense territories united with her under 
Charles the Great (151 6- 15 58), who inherited Spain, Bur- 
gundy, and the Low Countries, and added Austria with her 
German and Italian provinces by his accession to the imperial 
throne. Under Charles's powerful leadership Spain became 
the greatest nation in Europe; but at the same time her re- 
sources in men and wealth were exhausted in the almost con- 
stant warfare of his long reign. The treasures of America 
flowed through the land like water, in the expressive figure 
of a German historian, "not fertilizing it but laying it waste, 
and leaving sharper dearth behind." 2 The revenues of the 
plate fleet were pledged to German or Genoese bankers even 
before they reached the country, and were expended in the 
purchase of foreign luxuries or in waging imperial wars, 

1<( For the kings of England have for many years been at the charge 
to build and furnish a navy of powerful ships for their own defense, 
and for the wars only; whereas the French, the Spaniards, the Por- 
tugals, and the Hollanders (till of late) have had no proper fleet be- 
longing to their princes or state." Sir Walter Raleigh, A Discourse of 
the Invention of Ships. 

a DAs Zeit alter der Fuggek, Vol. II, p. 150. 



128 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

rather than in the encouragement of home agriculture, trade, 
and industry. While the vast possessions of church and no- 
bility escaped taxation, the people were burdened with levies 
on the movement and sale of commodities and on the com- 
mon necessities of life. Prohibition of imports to keep gold 
in the country was ineffectual, for without the supplies 
brought in by Dutch merchantmen Spain would have starved, 
and Philip II often had to connive in violations of his own 
restrictions. Prohibition of exports to keep prices down was 
an equally Quixotic measure, the chief effect of which was 
to kill trade. Spain could not supply the needs of her own 
colonies, and in fact illustrates the truth that a nation cannot, 
in the end, profit greatly by colonies unless it develops in- 
dustries to utilize their raw materials and supply their de- 
mands. 

For some time before the Armada Spain was on the down- 
ward path, as a result of the conditions mentioned. On the 
other hand, while the Armada relieved England of a terrible 
danger and dashed Spain's hope of domination in the north, 
it was not of itself a fatal blow. The war still continued, 
with other Spanish expeditions organized on a grand scale, 
and ended in 1604, so far as England was concerned, with 
that country's renunciation of trade to the Indies and aid to 
the Dutch. 

But even if Spain's rise and decline were not primarily a 
result of sea power, still, taking the term to include the ex- 
tension of shipping and maritime trade as well as the employ- 
ment of naval forces in strictly military operations, there are 
lessons to be drawn from the use or neglect of sea power 
by both sides in Spain's long drawn-out struggle with Hol- 
land and England. 

REFERENCES 

General 

The Expansion of Europe, a History of the Foundations of the 

Modern World, by Prof. W. C. Abbot, 1918. 
The Story of Geographical Discovery, J. Jacobs, 1913. 
Ships and Their Ways of Other Days, E. Keble Chatterton, 1906. 



OPENING THE OCEAN ROUTES 129 

The Dawn of Navigation, Thomas G. Ford, U. S. Naval Institute 

Proceedings, Vol. XXXIII., 1-3. 
The Dawn of Modern Geography, 2 vols., C. Raymond Beazley, 

1904. 

Portugal 

Prince Henry the Navigator, C. Raymond Beazley, 1895. 

Vasco da Gama and His Successors, 1460-1580, K. G. Jayne, 1910. 

Rise of Portuguese Power in India, R. S. Whiteway, 1910. 

Cambridge Modern History, Vol. I., Ch. I. 

History of the Indian Navy, Lieut. C. R. Low, 1877. 

Spain 

The Discovery of America, John Fiske, 1893. 

Spain in America, E. G. Bourne, American Nation Series, 1909. 

Spain, Martin Hume, Cam. Modern Hist. Series, 1898. 



CHAPTER VII 

SEA POWER IN THE NORTH : HOLLAND'S STRUG- 
GLE FOR INDEPENDENCE 

The first sea-farers in the storm-swept waters of the north, 
at least in historic times, were the Teutonic tribes along the 
North Sea and the Baltic. On land the Teutons held the 
Rhine and the Danube against the legions of Rome, spread' 
later southward and westward, and founded modern Euro- 
pean states out of the wreckage of the Roman Empire. On 
the sea, Angles, Saxons, and Jutes in the 8th century began 
plundering the coasts of what is now England, and, after 
driving the Celts into mountain fastnesses, established them- 
selves in permanent control. 

The Vikings 

These Teutonic voyagers were followed toward the close 
of the 8th century by their Scandinavian kindred to the 
northward, the Vikings — superb fighting men and daring sea- 
rovers who harried the coasts of western Europe for the next 
200 years. There were no navies to stop them. "These sea 
dragons," exclaimed Charlemagne, "will tear my kingdom 
asunder!" In England no king before Alfred had a navy; 
and Alfred was compelled to organize a strong sea force to 
bring the invaders to terms. 

Elsewhere the Vikings met little opposition. Wherever 
they found lands that attracted them, they conquered and 
settled down. Thus Normandy came into being. They 
swept up the rivers, burning and looting where they pleased, 
from the Elbe to the Rhone. They carried their raids as far 
south as Sicily and the Mediterranean coast of Africa, and 

130 



SEA POWER IN THE NORTH 131 

as far north and west as Iceland, Greenland, and the Ameri- 
can continent. In the east, by establishing a Viking colony 
at Nishni Novgorod, they laid the foundations of the Rus- 
sian empire, and their leader, Rus, gave it his name. Follow- 
ing river courses, others penetrated inland as far as Constan- 
tinople, where, being bought off by the emperor, they took 
service as imperial guards. 

Their extraordinary voyages were made in boats that re- 
semble so closely Greek and Roman models — even Phoeni- 
cian, for that matter — as to suggest that the Vikings learned 
their ship-building from Mediterranean traders who forced 
their way into the Baltic in very early times. For example, 
the Viking method of making a rib in three parts is identical 
with the method of the Greeks and Romans. The chief 
points of difference are that Viking ships were sharp at 
both ends — like a canoe, were round-bottomed instead of flat, 
and had one steering oar instead of two. The typical Viking 
ship was only about 75 feet in length ; but a royal vessel — the 
Dragon of the chief — sometimes attained a length of 300 feet, 
with sixty pairs of oars. 

If the Vikings had had national organization under one 
head, they might well have laid the rest of Europe under 
tribute. In the nth century, Cnut, a descendant of the Vik- 
ings, ruled in person over England, Denmark, and Norway. 
But their ocean folk-wanderings seem to have ended as sud- 
denly as they began, and the effects were social rather than 
political. Where they settled, they brought a strain of the 
hardiest racial stock in Europe to blend with that of the 
conquered peoples. 

The Hanseatic League 

During the Middle Ages, peaceful trading gradually gained 
the upper hand over piracy and conquest. From the Italian 
cities the wares of the south and the Orient came over the 
passes of the Alps and down the German rivers, where trading- 
cities grew up to act as carriers of merchandise and civiliza- 
tion among the nations of the north. The merchant guilds of 



132 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

these cities, banded together in the Hanseatic League, for at 
least three centuries dominated the northern seas. 

Perhaps the most extensive commercial combination ever 
formed for the control of sea trade, the Hanseatic League 
began with a treaty between Liibeck and Hamburg in 1174, 
and at the height of its power in the 14th and 15th centuries 
it included from 60 to 80 cities, of which Liibeck, Cologne, 
Brunswick, and Danzig were among the chief. The league 
cleared northern waters of pirates, and used embargo and 
naval power to subdue rivals and promote trade. It estab- 
lished factories or trading stations from Nishni Novgorod to 
Bergen, London, and Bruges. From Russia it took cargoes 
of fats, tallows, wax, and wares brought into Russian markets 
from the east ; from Scandinavia, iron and copper ; from Eng- 
land, hides and wool; from Germany, fish, grain, beer, and 
manufactured goods of all kinds. The British pound sterling 
(Osterling) and pound avoirdupois, in fact the whole British 
system of weights and coinage, are legacies from the German 
merchants who once had their headquarters in the Steelyard, 
London. 

In the early 15th century the league attempted to shut 
Dutch ships from the Baltic trade by restricting their cargoes 
to wares produced in their own country, and by coercing 
Denmark into granting the league special privileges on the 
route through the Sound. This policy, culminating in the 
destruction of the Dutch grain fleet in 1437, led to a naval 
struggle which extended over four years and ended in a 
truce by which the Dutch secured the freedom of the Baltic. 
It was a typical naval war for sea control and commercial ad- 
vantage, in which the Dutch as a rule seem to have got the 
better, and in which the legend first made its appearance of 
a Dutch admiral sweeping the seas with a broom nailed to his 
mast. 

From this time the power of the Hansa declined. This 
was partly because the free cities came more and more under 
the rule of German princes with no interest in, or knowledge 
of, commerce; partly because of rivalry arising from the 
union of the Scandinavian states (1397) and the growth of 



SEA POWER IN THE NORTH 133 

England, France, and the Low Countries to national strength 
and commercial independence; and partly also because of the 
decline of German fisheries when the herring suddenly shifted 
from the Baltic to the North Sea. Underlying these varied 
causes, however, and significant of the far-reaching effect of 
changing trade-routes upon the progress and prosperity of 
nations, was the fact that, when the Mediterranean trade 
route was closed by the Turks, and also the route through 
Russia by Ivan III, the German cities were side-tracked. 
Antwerp and Amsterdam were not only more centrally located 
for the distribution of trade, but also much nearer for At- 
lantic traffic — an advantage which Germany has ever since 
keenly envied. 

Long before the rise of the Low Countries as a maritime 
power, Ghent and Bruges had enjoyed an early preeminence 
owing to their development of cloth manufacture, and the 
latter city as a terminus for the galleys of Venice and Genoa. 
After the silting up of the port of Bruges (1432), Antwerp 
grew in importance, and in the 16th century became the 
chief market and money center of Europe. Its inhabitants 
numbered about 100,000, with a floating population of up- 
wards of 50,000 more. It contained the counting-houses of 
the great bankers of Europe — the Fuggers of Germany, the 
Pazzi of Florence, the Dorias of Genoa. Five thousand mer- 
chants were registered on the Bourse, as many as 500 ships 
often left the city in a single day, and two or three thousand 
more might be seen anchored in the Scheldt or lying along 
the quays. 1 Amsterdam by 1560 was second to Antwerp 
with a population of 40,000, and forged ahead after the sack 
of Antwerp by Spanish soldiers in 1576 and the Dutch block- 
ade of the Scheldt during the struggle with Spain. 

This early prosperity of the Netherland cities may be at- 
tributed less to aggressive maritime activity than to their 
flourishing industries, their natural advantages as trading 
centers at the mouths of the Rhine, Scheldt, and Meuse, and 
the privileges of self-government enjoyed by the middle classes 
under the House of Burgundy and even under Charles the 

1 Blok, History of the People of the Netherlands, Part II, Ch. XII. 



134 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

Great. Charles taxed them heavily — his revenues from the 
Low Countries in reality far exceeded the treasure he drew 
from America; but he was a Fleming born, spoke their 
language, and accorded them a large measure of political and 
religious freedom. The grievances which after his death led 
to the Dutch War of Independence, are almost personified 
in the son who succeeded him in 1555 — Philip II, a Spaniard 
born and bred, who spoke no Flemish and left Brussels for 
the last time in 1559, dour, treacherous, distrustful, fanatical 
in religion; a tragic character, who, no doubt with great 
injustice to the Spanish, has somehow come to represent the 
character of Spain in his time. 

The Dutch Struggle for Freedom 

The causes of the long war in the Netherlands, which began 
in 1566 and ended with their independence 43 years later, is 
best explained in terms of general principles rather than spe- 
cific grievances. "A conflict in which the principle of Catholi- 
cism with unlimited royal autocracy as Spain recognized it, 
was opposed to toleration in the realm of religion, with a 
national government according to ancient principles and based 
on ancient privileges," — so the Dutch historian Blok sums 
up the issues at stake. The Prince of Orange, just before 
he was cut down by an assassin, asserted in his famous 
Defense three fundamental principles : freedom to worship 
God; withdrawal of foreigners; and restoration of the char- 
ters, privileges, and liberties of the land. The Dutch fought 
for political, religious, and also for economic independence. 
England gave aid, not so much for religious motives as be- 
cause she saw that her political safety and commercial pros- 
perity hinged on the weakening of Spain. 

Resembling our American Revolution in the character of 
the struggle as well as the issues at stake — though it was far 
more bloody and desperate — the Dutch War of Independence 
was fought mainly within the country itself, with the popula- 
tion divided, and the Spanish depending on land forces to 
maintain their rule; but, as in the American war, control of 



SEA POWER IN THE NORTH 135 

the sea was a vital factor. For munitions, supplies, gold, for 
the transport of the troops themselves, Spain had to depend 
primarily on the sea. It is true one could continue on Spanish 
territory from Genoa, which was Spain's Watergate into Italy, 
across the Mont Cenis Pass, and through Savoy, Burgundy, 
Lorraine, and Luxembourg to Brussels, and it was by this 
route that Parma's splendid army of 10,000 "Blackbeards" 
came in 1577. But this was an arduous three months' march 
for troops and still more difficult for supplies. To cross 
France was as a rule impossible; when Don John of Austria 
went to Flanders for the brief period of leadership ended 
by his death of camp fever in 1577J he passed through French 
territory disguised as a Moorish slave. By the sea route, 
upon which Spain was after all largely dependent, and the 
complete control of which would have made her task infinitely 
easier, she was constantly exposed to Huguenot, Dutch, and 
English privateers. These gentry cared little whether or not 
their country was actually at war with Spain, but took their 
letters of marque, if they carried them, from any prince or 
ruler who would serve their turn. 

With this opportunity to strike at Spanish communications, 
it will appear strange that the Dutch should not have imme- 
diately seized their advantage and made it decisive. One 
curious difficulty lay in the fact that throughout the war 
Dutch shipping actually carried the bulk of Spanish trade 
and drew from it immense profits. Even at the close of the 
century, while the war was still continuing, nine-tenths of 
Spain's foreign trade and five-sixths of her home trade was 
in foreign — and most of it in Dutch — hands. Hence any 
form of sea warfare was sure to injure Dutch trade. The 
Revolution, moreover, began slowly and feebly, with no well- 
thought-out plan of campaign, and could not at once fit out 
fully organized forces to cope with those of Spain. The 
Dutch early took to commerce warfare, but it was at first 
semi-piratical, and involved the destruction of ships of their 
own countrymen. 

The Sea Beggars — Zee Geuzen or Gueux der Mer — made 
their appearance shortly after the outbreak of rebellion. 

1 



136 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 




From Shepherd's Historical Atlas. 
THE NETHERLANDS IN THE l6TH CENTURY 



SEA POWER IN THE NORTH 137 

"Vyve les geus par mer et par terre," wrote the patriot 
Count van Brederode as early as 1566. The term "beggar" 
is said to have arisen from a contemptuous remark by a 
Spanish courtier to Margaret of Parma, when the Dutch 
nobles presented their grievances in Brussels. Willingly ac- 
cepting the name, the patriots applied it to their forces both 
by land and by sea. Letters of marque were first issued by 
Louis of Nassau, brother of William of Orange, and in 1569 
there were 18 ships engaged, increased in the next year to 
84. The bloody and licentious De la Marck, who wore his 
hair and beard unshorn till he had avenged the execution of 
his relative, Egmont, was a typical leader of still more wild 
and reckless crews. It was no uncommon practice to go over 
the rail of a merchant ship with pike and ax and kill every 
Spaniard on board. In 1569 William of Orange appointed 
the Seigneur de Lumbres as admiral of the beggar fleet, and 
issued strict instructions to him to secure better order, avoid 
attacks on vessels of friendly and neutral states, enforce the 
articles of war, and carry a preacher on each ship. The 
booty was to be divided one-third to the Prince for the main- 
tenance of the war, one-third to the captains to supply their 
vessels, and one-third to the crews, one-tenth of this last share 
going to the admiral in general command. 

The events of commerce warfare, though they often in- 
volve desperate adventures and hard fighting, are not indi- 
vidually impressive, and the effectiveness of this warfare is 
best measured by collective results. On one occasion, when 
a fleet of transports fell into the hands of patriot forces off 
Flushing in 1572, not only were 1000 troops taken, but also 
500,000 crowns of gold and a rich cargo, the proceeds of 
which, it is stated, were sufficient to carry on the whole war 
for a period of two years. Again it was fear of pirates 
(Huguenot in this case) that in December of 1568 drove a 
squadron of Spanish transports into Plymouth, England, with' 
450,000 ducats ($800,000) aboard for the pay of Spanish 
troops. Elizabeth seized the money (on the ground that it 
was still the property of the Genoese bankers who had lent 
it and that she might as well borrow it as Philip), and minted 



138 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

it into English coin at a profit of £3000. But Alva at Ant- 
werp, with no money at all, was forced to the obnoxious 
"Hundreds" tax — requiring a payment of one per cent on all 
possessions, five per cent on all real estate transfers, and 10 
per cent every time a piece of merchandise was sold— a 
typical tax after the Spanish recipe, which, though not finally 
enforced to its full extent, aroused every Netherlander as a 
fatal blow at national prosperity. To return to the general 
effect of commerce destruction, it is estimated that Spain thus 
lost annually 3,000,000 ducats ($6,400,000), a sum which 
of course meant vastly more then than now. When the Duke 
of Alva retired from command in 1578, the pay of Spanish 
troops was 6,500,000 ducats in arrears. 

Among the exploits of organized naval forces, the earliest 
was the capture of Brill, by which, according to Motley, "the 
foundations of the Dutch republic were laid." Driven out 
of England by Elizabeth, who upon the representations of 
the Spanish ambassador ordered her subjects not to supply 
the Beggars with "meat, bread or beer," a fleet of 25 vessels 
and 300 or 400 men left Dover towards the end of March, 
1572, with the project of seizing a base on their own coast. 
On the afternoon of April 1, they appeared off the town of 
Brill, located on an island at the mouth of the Meuse. The 
magistrates and most of the inhabitants fled; and the Beg- 
gars battered down the gates, occupied the town, and put to 
death 13 monks and priests. When Spanish forces attempted 
to recapture the city, the defenders opened sluice gates to 
cut off the northern approach, and at the same time set fire 
to the boats which had carried the Spanish to the island. The 
Spanish, terrorized by both fire and water, waded through 
mud and slime to the northern shore. During the same week 
Flushing was taken, and before the end of June the Dutch 
were masters of nearly the entire Zealand coast. 

In the north the Spanish at first found an able naval leader in 
Admiral Bossu, himself a Hollander, who for a time kept the 
coast clear of Beggars. In October, 1573, however, 30 of 
his ships were beaten in the Zuyder Zee by 25 under Dirkzoon, 
who captured five of the Spanish vessels and scattered the rest 



SEA POWER IN THE NORTH 139 

with the exception of the flagship. The latter, a 32-gun ship 
terrifyingly named the Inquisition and much stronger than 
any of the others on either side, held out from three o'clock 
in the afternoon until the next morning. Three patriot ves- 
sels closed in on her, attacking with the vicious weapons of 
the period — pitch, boiling oil, and molten lead. By morning 
the four combatant! had drifted ashore in a tangled mass. 
When Bossu at last Surrendered, 300 men, out of 382 in his 
ship's complement, were! dead or disabled. 

Though not yet able to stand up against Spanish infantry, 
the Dutch in naval battles were usually successful. In the 
Scheldt, January 29, 1574, 75 Spanish vessels were attacked 
by 64 Dutch under Admiral Boisot. After a single broadside, 
the two fleets grappled, and in a two-hour fight at close quarters 
eight of the Spanish ships were captured, seven destroyed, 
and 1200 Spaniards killed. The Spanish commander, Julian 
Romero, who escaped through a port-hole, is said to have re- 
marked afterwards, "I told you I was a land fighter and no 
sailor; give me a hundred fleets and I would fare no better." 

In September following, Admiral Boisot brought some of 
his victorious ships and sailors to the relief of Leyden, whose 
inhabitants and garrison had been reduced by siege to the 
very last extremities. The campaign that followed was 
typical of this amphibious war. Boisot's force, with those 
already on the scene, numbered about 2500, equipped with 
some 200 shallow-draft boats and row-barges mounting an 
average of ten guns each. Among them was the curious Ark 
of Delft, with shot-proof bulwarks and paddle-wheels turned 
by a crank. As a result of ruthless flooding of the country, 
ten of the fifteen miles between Leyden and the outer dyke 
were easily passed ; but five miles from the city ran the Land- 
scheidung or inner dyke, which was above water, and beyond 
this an intricate system of canals and flooded polders, with 
forts and villages held by a Spanish force four times as 
strong. The most savage fighting on decks, dykes, and 
bridges marked every step forward; the Dutch in their native 
element attacking with cutlass, boathook and harpoon, while 
the superior military discipline of the Spanish could not 



140 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

come in play. But at least 20 inches of water were necessary 
to float the Dutch vessels, and it was not until October 3 that 
a spring tide and a heavy northwest gale made it possible to 
reach the city walls. In storm and darkness, terrified by the 
rising waters, the Spanish fled. The relief of the city marked 
a turning-point in the history of the revolt. 

During the six terrible years of Alva's rule in the Nether- 
lands (1572-1578) the Dutch sea forces contributed heavily 
toward the maintenance of the war, assured control of the 
Holland and Zealand coasts, and more than once, as at Brill 
and Leyden, proved the salvation of the patriot cause. Hol- 
land and Zealand, the storm-centers of rebellion, were not 
again so devastated, though the war dragged on for many 
years, maintained by the indomitable spirit of William of 
Orange until his assassination in 1584, and afterward by the 
military skill of Maurice of Nassau and the aid of foreign 
powers. The seven provinces north of the Scheldt, separat- 
ing from the Catholic states of the south, prospered in trade 
and industry as they shook themselves free from the stifling 
rule of Spain. By a twelve-year truce, finally ratified in 1609, 
they became "free states over which Spain makes no pre- 
tensions," though their independence was not fully recognized 
until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The war, while it 
ruined Antwerp, increased the prosperity of Holland and 
Zealand, which for at least twenty years before the truce were 
busily extending their trade to every part of the world. 

Growth of Dutch Commerce 

The story of this expansion of commerce is a striking rec- 
ord. The grain and timber of the Baltic, the wines of France 
and Spain, the salt of the Cape Verde Islands, the costly 
wares of the east, came to the ports of the Meuse and Zuyder 
Zee. In 1590 the first Dutch traders entered the Mediter- 
ranean, securing, eight years later, the permission of the Sul- 
tan to engage in Constantinople trade. In 1594 their ships 
reached the Gold Coast, and a year later four vessels visited 
Madagascar, Goa, Java, and the Moluccas or Spice Islands. 



SEA POWER IN THE NORTH 141 

A rich Zealand merchant had a factory at Archangel and a 
regular trade into the White Sea. Seeking a reward of 
25,000 florins offered by the States for the discovery of a 
northeast passage, Jacob van Heimskirck sailed into the Arc- 
tic and wintered in Nova Zembla; Henry Hudson, in quest 
of a route northwestward, explored the river and the bay that 
bear his name and died in the Polar Seas. 

Statistics, while not very trustworthy and not enlightening 
unless compared with those for other nations, may give some 
idea of the preponderance of Dutch shipping. At the time 
of the truce she is said to have had 16,300 ships, about 10,000 
of which were small vessels in the coasting trade. Of the 
larger, 3000 were in the Baltic trade, 2000 in the Spanish, 
600 sailed to Italy, and the remainder to the Mediterranean, 
South America, the Far East, and Archangel. The signifi- 
cance of these figures may be made clearer by citing Colbert's 
estimate that at a later period (1664) there were 20,000 
ships in general European carrying trade, 16,000 of which 
were Dutch. Throughout the 17th century Dutch commerce 
continued to prosper, and did not reach its zenith until early 
in the century following. 

In the closing years of the 16th century several private 
companies were founded in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and 
Zealand to engage in eastern trade. These were combined 
in 1602 into the United East Indies Company, which sent 
large fleets to the Orient each year, easily ousted the Portu- 
guese from their bases on the coast and islands, and soon es- 
tablished almost a monopoly, leaving to England only a small 
share of trade with Persia and northwest India. The rela^ 
tive resources invested by English and Dutch in Eastern ven- 
tures is suggested by the fact that the British East Indies 
Company founded in 1600 had a capital of £80,000, while the 
Dutch Company had £316,000. By 1620 the shares of the 
Dutch company had increased to three times their original 
value, and they paid average dividends of 18 per cent for, the 
next 200 years. 

In this Dutch conquest of eastern trade, like that of the 
Portuguese a century earlier, we have an illustration of what 



142 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

has since been a guiding principle in the history of sea power 
— a national policy of commercial expansion sturdily backed 
by foreign policy and whenever necessary by naval force. 
The element of national policy is evident in the fact that 
Holland — and England until the accession of James I in 
1603 — preferred war rather than acceptance of Spanish pre- 
tensions to exclusive rights in the southern seas. The Dutch, 
like the Portuguese, saw clearly the need of political control. 
They made strongholds of their trading bases, and gave their 
companies power to oust competitors by force. As a con- 
cession to Spanish pride, the commerce clause in the Truce 
of 1609 was made intentionally unintelligible — but the Dutch 
interpreted it to suit themselves. As for the element of force, 
every squadron that sailed to the east was a semi-military 
expedition. The Dutch seaman was sailor, fighter, and trader 
combined. The merchant was truly, in the phrase of the age, 
a "merchant adventurer," lucky indeed and enriched if, after 
facing the perils of navigation in strange waters, the possible 
hostility of native rulers, and the still greater danger from 
European rivals, half his ships returned. The last statement 
is no hyperbole; of 9 ships sent to the East from Amsterdam 
in 1598, four came back, and just half of the 22 sent out 
from the entire Netherlands. 

From time to time, either to maintain the blockade of the 
Scheldt and assist in operations on the Flanders coast, or to 
protect her commerce and strike a direct blow at Spain, the 
Dutch fitted out purely naval expeditions. One of the most 
effective, from the standpoint of actual fighting, was that 
led by Van Heimskirck, already famous for Arctic explora- 
tion and exploits in the Far East. In 1607 he took 21 con- 
verted merchantmen and 4 transports to the Spanish coast to 
protect Dutch vessels from the east and the Mediterranean. 
Encountering off Gibraltar an enemy force of n large gal- 
leons and as many galleys under Alvarez d'Avila, a veteran 
of Lepanto, he destroyed half the Spanish force and drove 
the rest into port, killing about 2000 Spanish and coming out 
of the fight with the loss of only 100 men. Heimskirck 
concentrated upon the galleons and came to close action after 



SEA POWER IN THE NORTH 143 

the fashion which seems to have been characteristic of the 
Dutch in naval engagements throughout the war. "Hold 
your fire till you hear the crash," he cried, as he drove his 
prow into the enemy flagship; and the battle was won after a 
struggle yard-arm to yard-arm. Both admirals were killed. 

Portugal, broken by the Spanish yoke, could offer little 
resistance in the Far East. In 1606 a Dutch fleet of 12 ships 
under Matelieff de Jonge laid siege to Malacca, and gave up 
the attempt only after destroying 10 galleons sent to relieve 
the town. Matelieff then sailed to the neighboring islands, and 
established the authority of the company at Bantam, Amboyna, 
Ternate, and other centers of trade. 

Other fleets earlier and later promoted the interests of the 
company by the same means. English traders, with scanty 
government encouragement from the Stuart kings, were not 
as yet dangerous rivals. A conflict occurred with them in 
161 1 off Surat; and at Amboyna in 1623 the Dutch seized the 
English Company's men, tortured ten of them, and broke up 
the English base. For more than a century Holland remained 
supreme in the east; she has retained her colonial empire 
down to the 20th century; and she did not surrender her 
commercial primacy until exhausted by the combined attacks 
of England and France. Less successful than England in 
the development of colonies, she has stood out as the greatest 
of trading nations. 

REFERENCES 

The Vikings 
The Viking Age, H. F. Du Chaillu, 1889. 

The Hansa 

The Hansa Towns, H. Zimmerman, 1889. 
History of Commerce, Clive Day, 1913 (bibliography). 
Civilization During the Middle Ages, George Burton Adams, 1918. 
Cambridge Modern History, Vols. I and II. 

Dutch Sea Power 

Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic (still the best source in Eng- 
lish for political and naval history of the period). 



144 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

History of the People of the Netherlands, P. J. Blok, trans. Ruth 

Putnam, 1898-1912. 
History of Commerce in Europe, W. H. Gibbins, 1917. 
The Sea Beggars, Dingman Versteg, 1901. 
Some Exploits of the Old Dutch Navy, Lieut. H. H. Frost, U. S. 

Naval Institute Proceedings, January, 1919. 



CHAPTER VIII 
ENGLAND AND THE ARMADA 

By reason of England's insularity, it is an easy matter to 
find instances from even her early history of the salutary 
or fatal influence of sea power. Romans, Saxons, Danes 
swept down upon England from the sea. By building a fleet, 
King Alfred, said to have been the true father of the British 
navy, drove out the Danes. It was the dispersion of the 
English fleet by reason of the lateness of the season that en- 
abled William the Conqueror, in the small open vessels inter- 
estingly pictured in the Bayeux tapestry, to win a footing on 
the English shore. 

But during the next three centuries, with little shipping and 
little trade save that carried on by the Hansa, with no enemy 
that dangerously threatened her by sea, England had neither 
the motives nor the national strength and unity to develop 
naval power. She claimed, it is true, dominion over the nar- 
row waters between her and her possessions in France, and 
also over the "four seas" surrounding her; and as early as 
1201 an ordinance was passed requiring vessels in these waters 
to lower sails ("vail the bonnet") and also to "lie by the lee" 
when so ordered by King's ships. But though these claims 
were revived in the 17th century against the Dutch, and though 
the requirement that foreign vessels strike their topsails to 
the British flag remained in the Admiralty Instructions until 
after Trafalgar, they were at this time enforced chiefly to rid 
the seas of pirates — the common enemies of nations. During 
this period there were a few "king's ships," the sovereign's 
personal property, forming a nucleus around which a naval 
force of fishing and merchant vessels could be assembled in 
time of war. The Cinque Ports, originally Dover, Sandwich, 
Hastings, Romney and Hythe, long enjoyed certain trading 

i45 



146 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

privileges in return for the agreement that when the king 
passed overseas they would "rigge up fiftie and seven ships" 
(according to a charter of Edward I) with 20 armed soldiers 
each, and maintain them for 1 5 days. 

An attack in 12 17 by such a fleet, under the Governor of 
Dover Castle, affords perhaps the earliest instance of maneu- 
vering for the weather-gage. The English came down from 
the windward and, as they scrambled aboard the enemy, threw 
quicklime into the Frenchmen's e)^es. At Sluis, in 1340, to 
take another instance of early English naval warfare, Edward 
III defeated a large French fleet and a number of hired Geno- 
ese galleys lashed side by side in the little river Eede in Flan- 
ders. Edward came in with a fair wind and tide and fell upon 
the enemy as they lay aground at the stern and unmanageable. 
This victory gave control of the Channel for the transport of 
troops in the following campaign. But like most early naval 
combats, it was practically a land battle over decks, and, al- 
though sanguinary enough, it is from a naval standpoint in- 
teresting chiefly for such novelties as a scouting force of 
knights on horseback along the shore. 

The beginnings of a permanent and strong naval establish- 
ment, as distinct from merchant vessels owned by the king 
or in his service, must be dated, however, from the Tudors 
and the period of national rehabilitation following the Hun- 
dred Years' War (1338-1452) and the War of the Roses 
(1455-1485). One reason for this was that the employment 
of artillery on shipboard and the introduction of port-holes 
made it increasingly difficult to convert merchant craft into 
dependable men-of-war. Henry VIII took a keen interest in 
his navy, devoted the revenues of forfeited church property to 
its expansion, established the first Navy Board (1546), and 
is even credited with the adoption of sailing vessels as the 
major units of his fleet. 

From Oar to Sail 

The use of heavy ordnance, already mentioned, as well as 
the increasing size and efficiency of sail-craft that came with 



ENGLAND AND THE ARMADA 147 

the spread of ocean commerce and navigation, naturally 
pointed the way to this transition in warfare from oar to sail. 
The galley was at best a frail affair, cumbered with oars, 
benches and rowers, unable to carry heavy guns or withstand 
their fire. Once sailing vessels had attained reasonable maneu- 
vering qualities, their superior strength and size, reduced num- 
ber of non-combatant personnel, and increased seaworthiness 




and cruising radius gave them a tremendous superiority. That 
the change should have begun in the north rather than in the 
Mediterranean, where naval and military science had reached 
its highest development, must be attributed not only to the 
rougher weather conditions of the northern seas, and the diffi- 
culty of obtaining slaves as rowers, but also to the fact that 
the southern nations were more completely shackled by the 
traditions of galley warfare. 

Yet for the new type it was the splendid trading vessels of 
Venice that supplied the design. For the Antwerp and Lon- 



148 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

don trade, and in protection against the increasing danger from 
pirates, the Venetians had developed a compromise between 
the war-galley and the round-ship of commerce, a type with 
three masts and propelled at least primarily by sails, with a 
length about three times its beam and thus shorter and more 
seaworthy than the galley, but longer, lower and swifter than 
the clumsy round-ship. To this new type the names galleas 
and galleon were both given, but in English and later usage 
galleas came to be applied to war vessels combining oar and 
sail, and galleon to either war or trading vessels of medium 
size and length and propelled by sail alone. 

The Spanish found the galleon useful in the Atlantic carry- 
ing trade, but, as shown at Lepanto, they retained the galley 
in warfare; whereas Henry VIII of England was probably 
the first definitely to favor sail for his men-of-war. An English 
navy list of 1545 shows four clumsy old-fashioned "great- 
ships" of upwards of 1000 tons, but second to these a dozen 
newer vessels of distinctly galleon lines, lower than the great- 
ships, flush-decked, and sail-driven. Though in engagements 
with French galleys during the campaign of 1545 these were 
handicapped by calm weather, they seem to have held their 
own both in battle and in naval opinion. Of the royal ships 
at the opening of Elizabeth's reign (1558), there were 11 large 
sailing vessels of 200 tons and upwards, and 10 smaller ones, 
but only two galleys, and these "of no continuance and not 
worth repair. x In comment on these figures, it should be 
added that there were half a hundred large ships available 
from the merchant service, and also that pinnaces and other 
small craft still combined oar and sail. 

In England the superiority of sail propulsion was soon defi- 
nitely recognized, and discussion later centered on the relative 
merits of the medium-sized galleon and the big "great-ships." 
The characteristics of each are well set forth in a contemporary 
naval treatise by Sir William Monson : the former with "flush 
deck fore and aft, sunk and low in the water; the other lofty 
and high-charged, with a half-deck, forecastle, and copper- 
idge-heads [athwartship bulkheads where light guns were 

1 Drake and the Tudor Navy, Corbett, Vol. I, p. 133. 



ENGLAND AND THE ARMADA 149 

mounted to command the space between decks]." The ad- 
vantage of the first were that she was speedy and "a fast ship 
by the wind" so as to avoid boarding by the enemy, and could 
run in close and fire effective broadsides between wind and 
water without being touched; whereas the big ship was more 
terrifying, more commodious, stronger, and could carry more 
and heavier guns. Monson, like many a later expert, sus- 
pended judgment regarding the two types; but Sir Walter 
Raleigh came out strongly for the smaller design. "The 
greatest ships," he writes, "are the least serviceable. . . . , less 
nimble, less maniable; 'Grande navi grande fatiga,' saith the 
Spaniard. A ship of 600 tons will carry as good ordnance as 
a ship of 1200 tons; and though the greater have double her 
number, the lesser will turn her broadsides twice before the 
greater can wind once." And elsewhere : "The high charg- 
ing of ships makes them extreme leeward, makes them sink 
deep in the water, makes them labor, and makes them overset. 
Men may not expect the ease of many cabins and safety at 
once in sea-service." 1 

These statements were made after the Armada ; but the 
trend of English naval construction away from unwieldy ships 
such as used by the Spanish in the Armada, is clearly seen in 
vessels dating from 15 70- 1580 — the Foresight, Bull, and 
Tiger (rebuilt from galleasses), the Swiftsure, Dreadnought, 
Revenge, and others of names renowned in naval annals. These 
were all of about the dimensions of the Revenge, which was 
of 440 tons, 92 feet over all, 32 feet beam, and 15 feet from 
deck to keel. That is to say, their length was not more than 
three times their beam, and their beam was about twice their 
depth in the hold — the characteristice proportions of the gal- 
leon type. 

The progressiveness of English ship construction is highly 
significant, for to it may be attributed in large measure the 
Armada victory. Spain had made no such advances ; in fact, 
until the decade of the Armada, she hardly had such a thing 
as a royal navy. The superiority of the English ships was 
generally recognized. An English naval writer in 1570 de- 
1 Works, Oxford ed. 1829, Vol. VIII, p. 338. 



150 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

clares the ships of his nation so fine "none of any other region 
may seem comparable to them"; and a Spaniard some years 
later testified that his people regarded "one English ship worth 
four of theirs." 

Though not larger than frigates of Nelson's time, these 
ships were crowded with an even heavier armament, compris- 
ing guns of all sizes and of picturesque but bewildering nomen- 
clature. According to Corbett, 1 the ordnance may be di- 
vided into four main classes based on caliber, the first two of 
the "long gun" and the other two of the carronade or mortar 
type. 

I. Cannon proper, from 18 to 28 caliber, of 8.5-inch bore 
and 12 feet in length, firing 65-pound shot. The demi-cannon, 
which was the largest gun carried on ships of the time, was 
6.5 inches by 9 feet and fired 30-pound shot. 

II. Culverins, 32 to 34 caliber long guns, 5 inches by 12 
feet, firing 17-pound shot. Demi-culverins were 9-pounders. 
Slings, bases, sakers, port-pieces, and fowlers belonged to this 
class. 

III. Perriers, from 6 to 8 caliber, firing stone-balls, shells, 
fire-balls, etc. 

IV. Mortars, of 1.5 caliber, including petards and mur- 
derers. 

The "great ordnance," or cannon, were muzzle-loading. The 
secondary armament, mounted in tops, cageworks, bulkheads, 
etc., were breech-loading; but these smaller pieces fell out of 
favor as time went on owing to reliance on long-range fire and 
rareness of boarding actions. Down to the middle of the 19th 
century there was no great improvement in ordnance, save in 
the way of better powder and boring. Even in Elizabeth's 
day the heaviest cannon had a range of three miles. 

These advances in ship design and armament were accom- 
panied by some changes in naval administration. In 1 546 the 
Navy Board was created, which continued to handle matters 
of what may be termed civil administration until its functions 
were taken over by the Board of Admiralty in the reorgani- 
zation of 1832. The chief members of the Navy Board, the 

1 Drake and the Tudor Navy, Vol. I, p. 384. 



ENGLAND AND THE ARMADA 151 

Treasurer, Comptroller, Surveyor of Ships, Surveyor of Ord- 
nance, and Clerk of Ships, were in Elizabethan times usually 
experienced in sea affairs. To John Hawkins, Treasurer from 
1578 to 1595, belongs chief credit for the excellent condition 
of ships in his day. The Lord High Admiral, a member of 
the nobility, exercised at least nominal command of the fleet 
in peace and war. For vice admiral under him a man of prac- 
tical experience was ordinarily chosen. On shipboard, the 
only "gentleman" officers were the captains; the rest — mas- 
ters, master's mates, pilots, carpenters, boatswains, coxswains, 
and gunners — were, to quote a contemporary description, "me- 
chanick men that had been bred up from swabbers." But 
owing to the small proportion of soldiers on board, the Eng- 
lish ships were not like those of Spain, which were organized 
like a camp, with the soldier element supreme and the sailors 
''slaves to the rest." 

The Political Situation 

The steps taken to build up the navy in the decade or more 
preceding the Armada were well justified by the political and 
religious strife in western Europe and the dangers which on 
all sides threatened the English realm. France, the Nether- 
lands, and Scotland were torn by religious warfare. In Eng- 
land the party with open or secret Catholic sympathies was 
large, amounting to perhaps half the population, the strength 
of whose loyalty to Elizabeth it was difficult to gage. Since 
1578 Elizabeth had held captive Mary Queen of Scots, driven 
out of her own country by the Presbyterian hierarchy, and a 
Catholic with hereditary claims to the English throne. Before 
her death, Philip of Spain had conspired with her to assas- 
sinate the heretic Elizabeth; after Mary's execution in 1585 he 
became heir to her claims and entered the more willingly upon 
the task of conquering England and restoring it to the faith. 
Since 1570, in fact, there had been a state of undeclared hos- 
tility between England and Spain, and acts which, with sov- 
ereigns less cautious and astute than both Elizabeth and Philip, 
would have meant war. In 1585 Elizabeth accepted sover- 



152 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

eignty over the Netherlands, and sent her favorite, Leicester, 
there as governor-general, and Sir Philip Sidney as Governor 
of Flushing, which with two other "cautionary towns" she took 
as pledges of Dutch loyalty. The motives for this action are 
well stated in a paper drawn up by the English Privy Council 
in 1584, presenting a situation interesting in its analogy to 
that which faced the United States when it entered the World 
War: 

"The conclusion of the whole was this: Although her 
Majesty should thereby enter into the war presently, yet were 
she better to do it now, while she may make the same out of 
her realm, having the help of the people of Holland, and before 
the King of Spain shall have consummated his conquest of 
those countries, whereby he shall be so provoked by pride, 
solicited by the Pope, and tempted by the Queen's own sub- 
jects, and shall be so strong by sea; and so free from all other 
actions and quarrels — yea, shall be so formidable to all the 
rest of Christendom, as that her Majesty shall no wise be able, 
with her own power, nor with the aid of any other, neither by 
land nor sea, to withstand his attempts, but shall be forced to 
give place to his insatiable malice, which is most terrible to 
be thought of, but miserable to suffer." 

These were the compelling reasons for England's entry into 
the war. The aid to Holland and the execution of Mary, on 
the other hand, were sufficient to explain Philip's attempted 
invasion. The grievance of Spain owing to the incursions of 
Hawkins and Drake into her American possessions, and Eng- 
land's desire to break Spain's commercial monopoly, were at 
the time relatively subordinate, though from a naval stand- 
point the voyages are interesting in themselves and important 
in the history of sea control and sea trade. 

Hawkins and Drake 

John Hawkins was a well-to-do ship-owner of Plymouth, 
and as already stated, Treasurer of the Royal Navy, with a 
contract for the upkeep of ships. His first venture to the 
Spanish Main was in 1562, when he kidnapped 300 negroes on 



ENGLAND AND THE ARMADA 153 

the Portuguese coast of Africa and exchanged them at His- 
panola (Haiti), for West Indian products, chartering two addi- 
tional vessels to take his cargo home. Though he might have 
been put to death if caught by either Portugal or Spain, his 
profits were so handsome by the double exchange that he tried 
it again in 1565, this time taking his ''choice negroes at £160 
each" to Terra Firme, or the Spanish Main, including the 
coasts of Venezuela, Colombia, and the Isthmus. When the 
Spanish authorities, warned by their home government, made 
some show of resistance, Hawkins threatened bombardment, 
landed his men, and did business by force, the inhabitants con- 
niving in a contraband trade very profitable to them. 

On his third voyage he had six vessels, two of which, the 
Jesus of Lubeck and the Minion, were Queen's ships hired 
out for the voyage. The skipper of one of the smaller ves- 
sels, the Judith, was Francis Drake, a relative and protege of 
the Hawkins family, and then a youth of twenty-two. On 
September 16, 1568, after a series of encounters stormier 
than ever in the Spanish settlements, the squadron homeward 
bound was driven by bad weather into the port of Mexico City 
in San Juan de Ulua Bay. Here, having a decided superiority 
over the vessels in the harbor, Hawkins secured the privilege 
of mooring and refitting his ships inside the island that formed 
a natural breakwater, and mounted guns on the island itself. 
To his surprise next morning, he beheld in the offing 13 ships 
of Spain led by an armed galleon and having on board the 
newly appointed Mexican viceroy. Hawkins, though his guns 
commanded the entrance, took hostages and made some sort 
of agreement by which the Spanish ships were allowed to 
come in and moor alongside. But the situation was too tense 
to carry off without an explosion. Three days later the Eng- 
lish were suddenly attacked on sea and shore. They at once 
leaped into their ships and cut their cables, but though they 
hammered the Spanish severely in the fight that followed, only 
two English vessels, the Minion and the Judith, escaped, the 
Minion so overcrowded that Hawkins had to drop 100 of his 
crew on the Mexican coast. Drake made straight for Plym- 
outh, nursing a bitter grievance at the alleged breach of 



154 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

faith, and vowing vengeance on the whole Spanish race. "The 
case," as Drake's biographer, Thomas Fuller, says, "was clear 
in sea-divinity, and few are such infidels as not to believe doc- 
trines which make for their own profit." x 

In the next three years, following the example of many a 
French Huguenot privateersman before him, and forsaking 
trade for semi-private reprisal (in that epoch a few degrees 
short of piracy), he made three voyages to the Spanish Indies. 
On the third, in 1572, he raided Nombre de Dios with fire and 
sword. Then, leaguing himself with the mixed-breed natives 
or cameroons, he waylaid a guarded mule-train bearing treas- 
ure across the Isthmus, securing 15 tons of silver which he 
buried, and as much gold as his men could stagger away under. 
It was on this foray that he first saw the Pacific from a height 
of the Cordilleras, and resolved to steer an English squadron 
into this hitherto unmolested Spanish sea. 

The tales of Drake's voyage into the Pacific and circum- 
navigation of the globe is a piratical epic, the episodes of 
which, however, find some justification in the state of virtual 
though undeclared hostilities between England and Spain, in 
the Queen's secret sanction, and in Spain's own policy of ruth- 
less spoliation in America. Starting at the close of 1577 with 
five small vessels, the squadron was reduced by shipwreck and 
desertion until only the flagship remained when Drake at last, 
on September 6 of the next year, achieved his midwinter pas- 
sage of the Straits of Magellan and bore down, "like a visi- 
tation of God" as a Spaniard said, upon the weakly defended 
ports of the west coast. After ballasting his ship with silver 
from the rich Potosi mines, and rifling even the churches* he 
hastened onward in pursuit of a richly laden galleon nick- 
named Cacafuego — a name discreetly translated Spitfire, but 
which, to repeat a joke that greatly amused Drake's men at 
the time, it was proposed to change to SpitsUver, for when 
overtaken and captured the vessel yielded 26 tons of silver, 13 
chests of pieces of eight, gold and jewels and sufficient to swell 
the booty to half a million pounds sterling. 

For 20 years the voyage across the northern Pacific had been 
1 The Holy State, Bk. II, Ch. XXII. 



ENGLAND AND THE ARMADA 155 

familiar to the Spanish, who had studied winds and currents, 
laid down routes, and made regular crossings. Having picked 
up charts and China pilots, and left the whole coast in panic 
fear, Drake sailed far to the northward, overhauled his ship in 
a bay above San Francisco, then struck across the Pacific, and 
at last rounded Good Hope and put into Plymouth in Sep- 
tember of the third year. It suited Elizabeth's policy to coun- 
tenance the voyage. She put the major part of the treasure 
into the Tower, took some trinkets herself, knighted Drake 
aboard the Golden Hind, and when the Spanish ambassador 
talked war she told him, in a quiet tone of voice, that she 
would throw him into a dungeon. 

This red-bearded, short and thickset Devon skipper, bold of 
speech as of action, was now the most renowned sailor of 
England, with a name that inspired terror on every coast of 
Spain. It was inevitable, therefore, that when Elizabeth re- 
solved upon open reprisals in 1585, Drake should be chosen to 
lead another, and this time fully authorized, raid on the Span- 
ish Indies. Here he sacked the cities of San Domingo and 
Carthagena, and, though he narrowly missed the plate fleet, 
brought home sufficient spoils for the individuals who backed 
the venture. In the next year (1587) with 23 ships and or- 
ders permitting him to operate freely on Spain's home coasts, 
he first boldly entered Cadiz, in almost complete disregard of 
the puny galleys guarding the harbor, and destroyed some 37 
vessels and their cargoes. Despite the horrified protests of 
his Vice Admiral Borough (an officer "of the old school" to 
be found in every epoch) at these violations of traditional 
methods, he then took up a position off Saigres where he could 
harry coastwise commerce, picked up the East Indiaman San 
Felipe with a cargo worth a million pounds in modern money, 
and even appeared off Lisbon to defy the Spanish Admiral 
Santa Cruz. Thus he "singed the King of Spain's beard," 
and set, in the words of a recent biographer, "what to this day 
may serve as the finest example of how a small, well-handled 
fleet, acting on a nicely timed offensive, may paralyze the 
mobilization of an overwhelming force." x 

1 Drake and the Tudor Navy, Corbett, Vol. II, p. 108. 



156 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

The Grand Armada 

At the time of this Cadiz expedition Spanish preparations 
for the invasion of England were already well under way, 
Philip being now convinced that by a blow at England all his 
aims might be secured — the subjugation of the Netherlands, 
the safety of Spanish America, the overthrow of Protestant- 
ism, possibly even his accession to the English throne. As 
the secret instructions to Medina Sidonia more modestly stated, 
it was at least believed that by a vigorous offensive and occu- 
pation of English territory England could be forced to cease 
her opposition to Spain. For this purpose every province of 
the empire was pressed for funds. Pope Sixtus VI contributed 
a million gold crowns, which he shrewdly made payable only 
when troops actually landed on English soil. Church and no- 
bility were squeezed as never before. The Cortes on the eve 
of the voyage voted 8,000,000 ducats, secured by a tax on 
wine, meat, and oil, the common necessities of life, which 
was not lifted for more than two hundred years. 

To gain control of the Channel long enough to throw 40,000 
troops ashore at Margate, and thereafter to meet and con- 
quer the army of defense — such was the highly difficult ob- 
jective, to assure the success of which Philip had been led to 
hope for a wholesale defection of English Catholics to the 
Spanish cause. Twenty thousand troops were to sail with 
the Armada ; Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, was to add 
17,000 veterans from Flanders and assume supreme com- 
mand. With the Spanish infantry once landed, under the best 
general in Europe, it was not beyond reason that England 
might become a province of Spain. 

What Philip did not see clearly, what indeed could scarce- 
\y be foreseen from past experience, was that no movement 
of troops should be undertaken without first definitely ac- 
counting for the enemy fleet. The Spanish had not even an 
open base to sail to. With English vessels thronging the north- 
ern ports of the Channel, with 90 Dutch ships blockading the 
Scheldt and the shallows of the Flanders coast, it would be 
necessary to clear the Channel by a naval victory, and main- 



ENGLAND AND THE ARMADA 157 

ain control until it was assured by victory on land. The leader 
first selected, Santa Cruz — a veteran of Lepanto — at least put 
naval considerations uppermost and laid plans on a grand 
scale, calling for 150 major ships and 100,000 men, 30,000 of 
them sailors. But with his death in 15S7 the campaign was 
again thought of primarily from the army standpoint. The 
ships were conceived as so many transports, whose duty at 
most was to hold the English fleet at bay. Parma was to be 
supreme. To succeed Santa Cruz as naval leader, and in order, 
it is said, that the gray-haired autocrat Philip might still con- 
trol from his cell in the Escorial, the Duke of Medina Sidonia 
was chosen — an amiable gentleman of high rank, but con- 
sciously ignorant of naval warfare, uncertain of purpose, and) 
despondent almost from the start. Medina had an experi- 
enced Vice Admiral in Diego Flores de Valdes, whose pro- 
fessional advice he usually followed, and he had able squad- 
ron commanders in Recalde, Pedro de Valdes, Oquendo, and 
others ; but such a commander-in-chief, unless a very genius 
in self-effacement, was enough to ruin a far more auspicious 
campaign. 

Delayed by the uncertain political situation in France, even 
more than by Drake's exploits off Cadiz, the Armada was at 
last, in May of 1588, ready to depart. The success of the 
Catholic party under the leadership of the Duke of Guise 
gave assurance of support rather than hostility on the 
French flank. There were altogether some 130 ships, the best 
of which were 10 war galleons of Portugal and 10 of the 
"Indian Guard" of Spain. These were supported by the 
Biscayan, Andalusian, Guipuscoan, and Levantine squadrons 
of about 10 armed merchantmen each, four splendid Neapoli- 
tan galleasses that gave a good account of themselves in ac- 
tion, and four galleys that were driven upon me French coast 
by storms and took no part in the battle — -making a total 
(without the galleys) of about 64 fighting ships. Then there 
were 35 or more pinnaces and small craft, and 23 ureas or 
storeships of little or no fighting value. The backbone of the 
force was the 60 galleons, large, top-lofty vessels, all but 20 
of them from the merchant service, with towering poops and 



158 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

forecastles that made them terrible to look upon but hard t . 
handle. On board were 8,000 sailors and 19,000 troops. 

Dispersed by a storm on their departure from Lisbon, the 
fleet again assembled at Corunna, their victuals already rotten, 
and their water foul and short. Medina Sidonia even now 
counseled abandonment ; but religious faith, the fatalistic pride 
of Spain, and Philip's dogged fixity of purpose drove them on. 
Putting out of Corunna on July 22, and again buffeted by Bis- 
cay gales, they were sighted off the Lizard at daybreak of July 
30, and a pinnace scudded into Plymouth with the alarm. 

For England the moment of supreme crisis had come. Eliza- 
beth's policy of paying for nothing that she might expect her 
subjects to contribute had left the royal navy short of what 
the situation called for, and the government seems also, even 
throughout the campaign, to have tied the admirals to the 
coast and kept them from distant adventures by limited supplies 
of munitions and food. But in the imminent danger, the no- 
bility, both Catholic and Protestant, and every coastwise city, 
responded to the call for ships and men. Their loyalty was 
fatal to Philip's plan. The royal fleet of 25 ships and a dozen 
pinnaces was reenforced until the total craft of all descrip- 
tions numbered 197, not more than 140 of which, however, 
may be said to have had a real share in the campaign. For a 
month or more a hundred sail had been mobilized at Plymouth, 
of which 69 were greatships and galleons. These were smaller 
in average tonnage than the Spanish ships, but more heavily 
armed, and manned by 10,000 capable seamen. Lord Henry 
Seymour, with Palmer and Sir William Winter under him, 
watched Parma at the Strait of Dover, with 20 ships and an 
equal number of galleys, barks and pinnaces. The Lord High 
Admiral, Thomas Howard of Effingham, a nobleman of 50 
with some naval experience and of a family that had long held 
the office, commanded the western squadron, with Drake as 
Vice Admiral and John Hawkins as Rear Admiral. The Ark 
(800 tons), Revenge (500), and Victory (800) were their re- 
spective flagships. Martin Frobisher in the big 1 100-ton Tri- 
umph, Lord Sheffield in the White Bear (1000), and Thomas 
Fenner in the Nonpareil (500) were included with the Admi- 



ENGLAND AND THE ARMADA 159 



COtD RAINY WEATHER 



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CRUISE OF THE SPANISH ARMADA 



160 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

rals in Howard's inner council of war. "Howard," says 
Thomas Fuller, "was no deep-seaman, but he had skill enough 
to know those who had more skill than himself and to follow 
their instructions." As far as was possible for a commoner, 
Drake exercised command. 

On the morning of the 31st the Armada swept slowly past 
Plymouth in what has been described as a broad crescent, but 
which, from a contemporary Italian description, seems to have 



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From Pigafetta's Discorso sopro I'Ordinansa dell' Armata Caiholico (Corbett's Drake, 
Vol. II, p. 213), 

ORIGINAL "EAGLE" FORMATION OF THE ARMADA, PROBABLY ADOPTED WITH 
SOME MODIFICATIONS AND SHOWING THE INFLUENCE OF GALLEY WAR- 
FARE 

been the "eagle" formation familiar to galley warfare, in line 
abreast with wide extended wings bent slightly forward, the 
main strength in center and guards in van and rear. Howard 
was just completing the arduous task of warping his ships out 
of the harbor. Had Medina attacked at once, as some of his 
subordinates advised, he might have compelled Howard to 
close action and won by superior numbers. But his orders 
suggested the advisability of avoiding battle till he had joined 
with Parma; and for the Duke this was enough. As the 
Armada continued its course, Howard fell in astern and to 



ENGLAND AND THE ARMADA 161 

windward, inflicting serious injuries to two ships of the enemy 
rear. 

A week of desultory running battle ensued as the fleets 
moved slowly through the Channel ; the English fighting "loose 
and large," and seeking to pick off stragglers, still fearful of 
a general action, but taking advantage of Channel flaws to close 
with the enemy and sheer as swiftly away; the Spanish on 
the defensive but able to avoid disaster by better concerted 
action and fleet control. Only two Spanish ships were actu- 
ally lost, one of them Pedro de Valdes' flagship Neustra Senora 




G LA N D 



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FRANCE1. 



From Hale's Story of the Great Armada. 
THE COURSE OF THE ARMADA UP THE CHANNEL 

del Rosario, which had been injured in collision and surren- 
dered to Drake without a struggle on the night of August i, the 
other the big San Salvador of the Guipuscoan squadron, the 
whole after part of which had been torn up by an explosion 
after the fighting on the first day. But the Spanish inferiority 
had been clearly demonstrated and they had suffered far more 
in morale than in material injuries when on Sunday, August 
8, they dropped anchor in Calais roads. The English, on their 
part, though flushed with confidence, had seen their weakness 
in organized tactics, and now divided their fleet into four 
squadrons, with the flag officers and Frobisher in command. 

It betrays the fatuity of the Spanish leader, if not of the 
whole plan of campaign, that when thus practically driven to 



162 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

refuge in a neutral port, Medina Sidonia thought his share of 
the task accomplished, and wrote urgent appeals to Parma to 
join or send aid, though the great general had not enough flat- 
boats and barges to float his army had he been so foolhardy 
as to embark, or the Dutch so benevolent as to let him go>. 
But the English, now reenforced by Seymour's squadron, gave 
the Duke little time to ponder his next move. At midnight 
eight fire hulks, "spurting flames and their ordnance explod- 
ing," were borne by wind and tide full upon the crowded 
Spanish fleet. Fearful of maquinas de minas such as had 
wrought destruction a year before at the siege of Antwerp, the 
Spanish made no effort to grapple the peril but slipped or cut 
cables and in complete confusion beat off shore. 

At dawn the Spanish galleons, attempting with a veering 
wind from the southward and westward to form in order off 
Gravelines, were set upon in the closest approach to a general 
engagement that occurred in the campaign. While Howard 
and several of his ships were busy effecting the capture of a 
stranded galleas, Drake led the attack in the Revenge, seeking 
to force the enemy to leeward and throw the whole body upon 
the shallows of the Flanders coast. With splendid discipline, 
the Spanish weather ships, the flagship San Martin among 
them, fought valiantly to cover the retreat. But it was an 
unequal struggle, the heavier and more rapid fire of the Eng- 
lish doing fearful execution on decks crowded with men-at- 
arms. Such artillery combat was hitherto unheard of. Though 
warned of the new northern methods, the Spanish were ob- 
sessed by tradition; they were prepared for grappling and 
boarding, and could they have closed, their numbers and disci- 
pline would have told. Both sides suffered from short ammu- 
nition ; but the Armada, with no fresh supplies, was undoubt- 
edly in the worse case. "They fighting with their great ord- 
nance," writes Medina Sidonia, "and we with harquebus fire 
and musketry, the distance being very small." Six-inch guns 
against bows and muskets tells the tale. 

A slackening of the English pursuit at nightfall after eight 
hours' fighting, and an off-shore slant of wind at daybreak, 
prevented complete disaster. One large galleon sank and two 



ENGLAND AND THE ARMADA 163 

more stranded and were captured by the Dutch. These losses 
were not indeed fatal, but the remaining ships staggering away 
to leeward were little more than blood-drenched wrecks. Fif- 
teen hundred had been killed and wounded in the day's action, 
and eleven ships and some eight thousand men sacrificed thus 
far in the campaign. The English, on the other hand, had 
suffered no serious ship injuries and the loss of not above ioo 
men. In the council held next day beyond the Straits of Dover, 
only a few of the Spanish leaders had stomach for further 
fighting; the rest preferred to brave the perils of a return 
around the Orkneys rather than face again these defenders of 
the narrow seas. Before a fair wind they stood northward, 
Drake still at their heels, though by reason of short supplies he 
left them at the Firth of Forth. 

In October, fifty ships, with 10,000 starved and fever- 
stricken men, trailed into the Biscay ports of Spain. Torn by 
September gales, the rest of the Armada had been sunk or 
stranded on the rough coasts of Scotland and Ireland. "The 
wreckers of the Orkneys and the Faroes, the clansmen of the 
Scottish isles, the kernes of Donegal and Galway, all had their 
part in the work of murder and robbery. Eight thousand 
Spaniards perished between the Giant's Causeway and the 
Blaskets. On a strand near Sligo an English captain numbered 
eleven hundred corpses which had been cast up by the sea." x 

"Flavit Deus, et dissipati sunt" — "The Lord sent His wind, 
and scattered them." So ran the motto on the English medal 
of victory. But storms completed the destruction of a fleet al- 
ready thoroughly defeated. Religious faith, courage, and dis- 
cipline had availed little against superior ships, weapons, lead- 
ership, and nautical skill. "Till the King of Spain had war 
with us," an Englishman remarked, "he never knew what war 
by sea meant." 2 It might be said more accurately that the 
battle gave a new meaning to war by sea. 

From the standpoint of naval progress, the campaign demon- 
strated definitely the ascendancy of sail and artillery. For the 
old galley tactics a new system now had to be developed. Since 

a HiSTORY of the English People, Green, Vol. II, p. 448. 

2 Sir Wm. Monson, Naval Tbacts, Purchas, Vol. Ill, p. 121. 



164 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

between sailing vessels head-on conflict was practically elimi- 
nated, and since guns mounted to fire ahead and astern were 
of little value save in flight or pursuit, the arrangement of guns 
in broadside soon became universal, and fleets fought in col- 
umn, or "line ahead," usually close-hauled on the same or op- 
posite tacks. While these were lessons for the next genera- 
tion, there is more permanent value in the truth, again illus- 
trated, that fortune favors the belligerent quicker to forsake 
outworn methods and to develop skill in the use of new 
weapons. The Spanish defeat illustrates also the necessity of 
expert planning and guidance of a naval campaign, with naval 
counsels and requirements duly regarded ; and the fatal effect 
of failure to concentrate attention on the enemy fleet. It is 
doubtful, however, whether it would have been better, as Drake 
urged, and as was actually attempted in the month before the 
Armada's arrival, if the English had shifted the war to the 
coast of Spain. The objections arise chiefly from the diffi- 
culties, in that age, of maintaining a large naval force far 
from its base, all of which the Spanish encountered in their 
northward cruise. It is noteworthy that, even after the brief 
Channel operations, an epidemic caused heavy mortality in 
the English fleet. Finally, the Armada is a classic example of 
the value of naval defense to an insular nation. In the often 
quoted words of Raleigh, "To entertain the enemy with their 
own beef in their bellies, before they eat of our Kentish capons, 
I take it to be the wisest way, to do which his Majesty after 
God will employ his good ships at sea." 

Upon Spain, already tottering from inherent weakness, the 
Armada defeat had the effect of casting down her pride and 
confidence as leader of the Catholic world. Though it was not 
until three centuries later that she lost her last colonies, her 
hold on her vast empire was at once shaken by this blow at her 
sea control. While she maintained large fleets until after 
the Napoleonic Wars, she was never again truly formidable 
as a naval power. But the victory lifted England more than it 
crushed Spain, inspiring an intenser patriotism, an eagerness 
for colonial and commercial adventure, an exaltation of spirit 



ENGLAND AND THE ARMADA 165 

manifested in the men of genius who crowned the Elizabethan 
age. 

The Last Years of the War 

The war was not ended; and though Philip was restrained 
by the rise of Protestant power in France under Henry of 
Navarre, he was still able to gather his sea forces on almost 
as grand a scale. In the latter stages of the war the naval 
expeditions on both sides were either, like the Armada, for the 
purpose of landing armies on foreign soil, or raids on enemy 
ports, colonies and commerce. Thus Drake in 1589 set out 
with a force of 18,000 men, which attacked Corunna, moved 
thence upon Lisbon, and lost a third or more of its number in 
a fruitless campaign on land. Both Drake and the aged 
Hawkins, now his vice admiral, died in the winter of 1595-96 
during a last and this time ineffective foray upon the Spanish 
Main. Drake was buried off Puerto Bello, where legend has 
it his spirit still awaits England's call — 

"Take my drum to England, hang et by the shore, 
Strike et when your powder's running low. 

If the Dons sight Devon, I'll leave the port of Heaven, 
An' drum them up the Channel as we drummed them long 
ago."* 

We are still far from the period when sea control was 
thought of as important in itself, apart from land operations, 
or when fleets were kept in permanent readiness to take 
the sea. It is owing to this latter fact that we hear of large 
flotillas dispatched by each side even in the same year, yet not 
meeting in naval action. Thus in June of 1596 the Essex ex- 
pedition, with 17 English and 18 Dutch men-of-war and numer- 
ous auxiliaries, seized Cadiz and burned shipping to the value 
of 11,000,000 ducats. There was no naval opposition, though 
Philip in October of the same year had ready a hundred ships 
and 16,000 men, which were dispersed with the loss of a 
quarter of their strength in a gale off Finisterre. Storms also 

1 Drake's Drum, Sir Henry Newbolt. 



166 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

scattered Philip's fleet in the next year; in 1598, Spanish 
transports landed 5,000 men at Calais; and England's fears 
were renewed in the year after that by news of over 100 ves- 
sels fitting out for the Channel, which, however, merely pro- 
tected the plate fleet by a cruise to the Azores. As late as 
1 60 1, Spain landed 3500 troops in Ireland. 

But if these major operations seem to have missed con- 
tact, there were many lively actions on a minor scale, the well- 
armed trading vessels of the north easily beating off the galley 
squadrons guarding Gibraltar and the routes past Spain. 
Among these lesser encounters, the famous "Last Fight of the 
Revenge," which occurred during operations of a small English 
squadron off the Azores in 1591, well illustrates the fighting 
spirit of the Elizabethan Englishman and the ineptitude which 
since the Armada seems to have marked the Spaniard at sea. 
In Drake's old flagship, attacked by 15 ships and surrounded by 
a Spanish fleet of 50 sail, a bellicose old sea-warrior named 
Sir Richard Grenville held out from nightfall until eleven the 
next day, and surrendered only after he had sunk three of 
the enemy, when his powder was gone, half his crew dead, the 
rest disabled, and his ship a sinking wreck. "Here die I, 
Richard Grenville," so we are given his last words, "with a 
joyful and a quiet mind, for that I have ended my life as a 
good soldier ought to do, who has fought for his country and 
his queen, his honor and his religion." 

The naval activities mentioned in the immediately preceding 
paragraphs had no decisive effect upon the war, which ended, 
for England at least, with the death of Elizabeth in 1603 and 
the accession of James Stuart of Scotland to the English 
throne. James at once adopted a policy of rapprochement 
with Spain, which while it guaranteed peace during the 22 
years of his reign, was by its renunciaton of trade with the 
Indies, aid to the Dutch, and leadership of Protestant Europe, 
a sorry sequel to the victory of fifteen years before. 

The Armada nevertheless marks the decadence of Spanish 
sea power. With the next century begins a new epoch in 
naval warfare, an age of sail and artillery, in which Dutch, 



ENGLAND AND THE ARMADA 167 

English, and later French fleets contested for the sea mastery 
deemed essential to colonial empire and commercial prosperity. 

REFERENCES 

Drake and the Tudor Navy, Sir Julian Corbett, 2 vols., 1898. 

The Successors of Drake, Sir Julian Corbett, 1900. 

The Story of the Great Armada, J. R. Hale, no date. 

Armada Papers, Sir John Knox Laughton, 2 vols., Navy Records 
Society, 1894. 

La Armada Invencible, Captain Fernandez Duro, 1884. 

A History of the Administration of the Royal Navy, 1509- 1660, 
by M. Oppenheim, 1896. 

A History of the Royal Navy, William Laird Clowes, Vol. I., 1897. 

The Growth of English Commerce and Industry, W. Cunning- 
ham, 1907. 

The Development of Tactics in the Tudor Navy, Capt. G. Gold- 
ingham, United Service Magazine, June, 1918. 



CHAPTER IX 

RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER: WARS WITH THE 

DUTCH. 

In the Dutch Wars of the 17th century the British navy may 
be said to have caught its stride in the march that made 
Britannia the unrivaled mistress of the seas. The defeat of 
the Armada was caused by other things besides the skill of the 
English, and the steady decline of Spain from that point was 
not due to that battle or to any energetic naval campaign un- 
dertaken by the English thereafter. In fact, save for the 
Cadiz expedition of 1596, in which the Dutch cooperated, 
England had a rather barren record after the Armada cam- 
paign down to the middle of the 17th century. During that 
period the Dutch seized the control of the seas for trade and 
war. They appropriated what was left of the Levantine 
trade in the Mediterranean, and contested the Portuguese 
monopoly in the East Indies and the Spanish in the West. In- 
deed the Dutch were at this time freely acknowledged to be 
the greatest sea-faring people of Europe. 1 

When the Commonwealth-came into' power in England the 
new government turned its attention to the navy, which had 
languished under the Stuarts. A great reform was accom- 
plished in the bettering of the living conditions for the sea- 
men. Their pay was increased, their share of prize money 
enlarged, and their food improved. At the same time, during 
the years 1648-51, the number of ships of the fleet was practi- 
cally doubled, and the new vessels were the product of the 

1 "Dutch exports reached a figure in the 17th century, which was not 
attained by the English until 1740. Even the Dutch fisheries, which em- 
ployed over 2000 boats, were said to be more valuable than the manu- 
factures of France and England combined." A History of Commerce, 
Clive Day, p. 194. 

168 



RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER 169 

highest skill in design and honest work in construction. The 
turmoil between Roundhead and Royalist had naturally dis- 
organized the officer personnel of the fleet. Prince Rupert, 
nephew of Charles I, had taken a squadron of seven Royalist 
ships to sea, hoping to organize, at the Scilly Islands or at 
Kinsdale in Ireland, bases for piratical raids on the commerce 
of England, and it was necessary to bring him up short. More- 
over, Ireland was still rebellious, Barbados, the only British 
possession in the West Indies, was held for the King, and Vir- 
ginia also was Royalist. To establish the rule of the Com- 
monwealth Cromwell needed an efficient fleet and an ener- 
getic admiral. 

For the latter he turned to a man who had won a military 
reputation in the Civil War second only to that of the great 
Oliver himself, Robert Blake, colonel of militia. Blake was 
appointed as one of two "generals at sea" in 1649. As far as 
is known he had never before set foot on a man of war; he 
was a scholarly man, who had spent ten years at Oxford, 
where he had cherished the ambition of becoming a professor 
of Greek. At the time of his appointment he was fifty years 
old, and his entire naval career was comprised in the seven or 
eight remaining years of his life, and yet he so bore himself 
in those years as to win a reputation that stands second only 
to that of Nelson among the sea-fighters of the English race. 

Blake made short work of Rupert's cruising and destroyed 
the Royalist pretensions to Jersey and the Scillies. One of his' 
rewards for the excellent service rendered was a position in 
the Council of State, in which capacity he did much toward 
the bettering of the condition of the sailors, which was one of 
the striking reforms of the Commonwealth. His test, how- 
ever, came in the first Dutch War, in which he was pitted 
against Martin Tromp, then the leading naval figure of Europe. 

In the wars with Spain, English and Dutch had been allies, 
but the shift of circumstances brought the two Protestant na- 
tions into a series of fierce conflicts lasting throughout the 
latter half of the 17th century. The outcome of these was that 
England won the scepter of the sea which she has ever since 
held. The main cause of the war was the rivalry of the two 



170 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

nations on the sea. There were various other specific reasons 
for bad feeling on both sides, as for instance a massacre by 
the Dutch of English traders at Amboyna in the East Indies, 
during the reign of James I, which still rankled because it had 
never been avenged. The English on their side insisted on a 
salute to their men of war from every ship that passed through 
the Channel, and claimed the rights to a tribute of all herrings 
taken within 30 miles off the English coast. 

Cromwell formulated the English demands in the Navi- 
gation Act of 1 65 1. The chief of these required that none 
but English ships should bring cargoes to England, save ves- 
sels of the country whence the cargoes came. This was frankly 
a direct blow at the Dutch carrying trade, one to which the 
Dutch could not yield without a struggle. 

For this struggle the Netherlanders were ill prepared. The 
Dutch Republic was a federation of seven sovereign states, 
lacking a strong executive and torn by rival factions. More- 
over, her geographical position was most vulnerable. Pressed 
by enemies on her land frontiers, she was compelled to main- 
tain an army of 57,000 men in addition to her navy; and, as 
the resources of the country were wholly inadequate to support 
the population, her very life depended on the sea. For the 
Holland of the 17th century, as for the England of the 20th, 
the fleets of merchantmen were the life blood of the nation. 
Unfortunately for the Dutch, this life blood had to course 
either through the Channel or else round the north of Scotland. 
Either way was open to attacks by the British, who held the 
interior position. Further, the shallows of the coasts and bays 
made necessary a flat bottomed ship of war, lighter built than 
the English and less weatherly in deep water. 

In contrast the British had a unity of government under the 
iron hand of Cromwell, they had the enormous advantage of 
position, they were self-sustaining, and their ships were larger, 
stouter and better in every respect that those of their enemies. 
Hence, although the Dutch entered the conflict with the naval 
prestige on their side, it is clear that the odds were decidedly 
against them. 



RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER 171 



The First Dutch War 

The fighting did not wait for a declaration of war. Blake 
met Tromp, who was convoying a fleet of merchantmen, off 
Dover on May 19, 1652. On coming up with him Blake fired 
guns demanding the required salute. Tromp replied with a 




SCILLV ISLES r y\ £v.V» 

JERSEY \ ~ 




QUIBERON BAV^Wj ;; 



SCENE OF THE PRINCIPAL NAVAL ACTIONS OF THE I7TH CENTURY BETWEEN 
ENGLAND AND HOLLAND AND ENGLAND AND FRANCE 



broadside. Blake attacked with his flagship, well ahead of his 
own line, and fought for five hours with Tromp's flagship and 
several others. The English were outnumbered about three 
to one, and Blake might have been annihilated had not the 
English admiral, Bourne, brought his squadron out from 
Dover at the sound of the firing and fallen upon Tromp's 
flank. As the Dutch Admiral's main business was to get his 
convoy home, he fell back slowly toward the coast of France, 



172 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

both sides maintaining a cannonade until they lost each other 
in the darkness. Apparently there was little attempt at forma- 
tion after the first onset; it was close quarters fighting, and 
only the wild gunnery of the day saved both fleets from enor- 
mous losses. As it was, Blake's flagship was very severely 
hammered. 

Following this action, Tromp reappeared with ioo ships, 
but failed to keep Blake from attacking and ruining the Dutch 
herring fisheries for that year. This mistake temporarily cost 
Tromp his command. He was superseded by DeWith, an able 
man and brave, but no match for Blake. On September 28, 
1652, Blake met him off the "Kentish Knock" shoal at the 
mouth of the Thames. In order to keep the weather gage, 
which would enable him to attack at close quarters, Blake took 
the risk of grounding on the shoal. His own ship and a few 
others did ground for a time, but they served as a guide to the 
rest. In the ensuing action Blake succeeded in putting the 
Dutch between two fires and inflicting a severe defeat. Only 
darkness saved the Dutch from utter destruction. 

The effect of this victory was to give the English Council 
of State a false impression of security. In vain Blake urged 
the upkeep of the fleet. Two months later, November 30, 1652, 
Tromp, now restored to command, suddenly appeared in the 
Channel with 80 ships and a convoy behind him. Blake had 
only 45 and these only partly manned, but he was no man 
to refuse a challenge and boldly sailed out to meet him. It is 
said that during the desperate struggle — the "battle of Dunge- 
ness" — Blake's flagship, supported by two others, fought for 
some time with twenty of the Dutch. As Blake had the 
weather gage and retained it, he was able to draw off finally 
and save his fleet from destruction. All the ships were badly 
knocked about and two fell into the hands of the enemy. 
Blake came back so depressed by his defeat that he offered to 
resign his command, but the Council of State would not hear of 
such a thing, handsomely admitted their responsibility for the 
weakness of the fleet, and set at work to refit. Meanwhile for 
the next three months the Channel was in Tromp's hands. 



RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER 173 

This is the period when the legend describes him as hoisting. 
a broom to his masthead. 

By the middle of February the English had reorganized their 
fleet and Blake took the sea with another famous Roundhead 
soldier, Monk, as one of his divisional commanders. At this 
time Tromp lay off Land's End waiting for the Dutch mer- 
chant fleet which he expected to convoy to Holland. On the 
18th the two forces sighted each other about 15 miles off Port- 
land. Then followed the "Three Days' Battle," or the battle 
of Portland, one of the most stubbornly contested fights in 
the war and its turning point. 

In order to be sure to catch Tromp, Blake had extended his 
force of 70 or 80 ships in a cross Channel position. Under 
cover of a fog Tromp suddenly appeared and caught the Eng- 
lish fleet divided. Less than half were collected under the 
immediate command of Blake, only about ten were in the ac- 
tual vicinity of his flagship, and the rest were to eastward, 
especially Monk's division which he had carelessly permitted 
to drift to leeward four or five miles. As the wind was from 
the west and very light, Monk's position made it impossible for 
him to support his chief for some time. Tromp saw his op- 
portunity to concentrate on the part of the English fleet nearest 
him, the handful of ships with Blake. The latter had the 
choice of either bearing up to make a junction with Monk and 
the others before accepting battle or of grappling with Tromp 
at once, trusting to his admirals to arrive in time to win a 
victory. It was characteristic of Blake that he chose the 
bolder course. 

The fighting began early in the afternoon and was close and 
furious from the outset. Again Blake's ship was compelled to 
engage several Dutch, including Tromp's flagship. De Ruyter, 
the brilliant lieutenant of Tromp, attempted to cut Blake off 
from his supports on the north, and Evertsen steered between 
Blake and Penn's squadron on the south. (See diagram 1.) 
Blake's dozen ships might well have been surrounded and taken 
if his admirals had not known their business. Penn tacked 
right through Evertsen's ^squadron to come to the side of 
Blake, and Lawson foiled de Ruyter by bearing away till he 



174 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



JSi Pha.se- the moment of impact. 



•& 



Wind N.W. 




Oa RUVTEB 



' 0™° 0\ 



OUTC H 

CONVOV 


THO-J^ 


Hht -'' 


..' 


• 'VVHire squaoron 
. (MonK) a 






^gBR-feeo 


1 


iaiue 


^ 


^Ui!l% 


^BLU6 







DUTCH ©ROUPS 
ENGLISH GROUPS 



2&s Phose -the fleets engaged. 



,\ 



Da r u v t ea 



,TROMP 



Bla-ko 

'T«Olv|P 



f 



EVEOTSEN_/ 



Based on diagram of Mahan's in Clowes, The Royal Navy, Vol. II, p. 180-1. 
THE BATTLE OF PORTLAND, FEB. l8, 1653 



had enough southing to tack in the wake of Penn and fall 
upon Tromp's rear (diagram 2). Evertsen then attempted 
to get between Monk and the rest of the fleet and two hours 
after the fight in the center began Monk also was engaged. 
When the lee vessels of the "red" or center squadron came on 
the scene about four o'clock, they threatened to weather the 



RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER 175 

Dutch and put them between two fires. To avoid this and to 
protect his convoy, Tromp tacked his whole fleet together — an 
exceedingly difficult maneuver under the circumstances — and 
drew off to windward. Darkness stopped the fighting for that 
day. All night the two fleets sailed eastward watching each 
other's lights, and hastily patching up damages. 

Morning discovered them off the Isle of Wight, with the 
English on the north side of the Channel. As Tromp's chief 
business was to save his convoy and as the English force was 
now united, he took a defensive position. He formed his own 
ships in a long crescent, with the outward curve toward his 
enemy, and in the lee of this line he placed h?s convoy. The 
wind was so light that the English were unable to attack until 
late. The fighting, though energetic, had not proved decisive 
when darkness fell. 

The following day, the 20th, brought a fresh wind that en- 
abled the English to overhaul the Dutch, who could not move 
faster than the heavily laden merchantmen, and force a close 
action. Blake tried to cut off Tromp from the north so as to 
block his road home. Vice Admiral Penn, leading the van, 
broke through the Dutch battle line and fell upon the convoy, 
but Blake was unable to reach far enough to head off his 
adversary before he rounded Cape Gris Nez under cover of 
darkness and found anchorage in Calais roads. That night, 
favored by the tide and thick weather, Tromp succeeded in 
carrying off the greater part of his convoy unobserved. Never- 
theless he had left in Blake's hand some fifty merchantmen and 
a number of men of war variously estimated from five to 
eighteen. At the same time the English had suffered heavily 
in men and ships. On Blake's flagship alone it is said that 100 
men had been killed and Blake and his second in command, 
Deane, were both wounded, the former seriously. 

The result of this three days' action was to encourage the 
English to press the war with energy and take the offensive to 
the enemy's own coast. English crews had shown that they 
could fight with a spirit fully equal to that of the Dutch, and 
English ships and weight of broadside, as de Ruyter frankly 
declared to his government, were decidedly superior. The 



176 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

fact that the shallow waters of the Dutch coast made necessary 
a lighter draft man of war than that of the English proved a 
serious handicap to the Dutch in all their conflicts with the 
British. Both fleets were so badly shot up by this prolonged 
battle that there was a lull in operations until May. 

In that month Tromp suddenly arrived off Dover and bom- 
barded the defenses. The English quickly took the sea to 
hunt him down. As Blake was still incapacitated by his 
wound, the command was given to Monk. The latter, with a 
fleet of over a hundred ships, brought Tromp to action on 
June 2 (1653) in what is known as the "Battle of the 
Gabbard" after a shoal near the mouth of the Thames, where 
the action began. Tromp was this time not burdened with a 
convoy but his fleet was smaller in numbers than Monk's and, 
as he well knew, inferior in other elements of force. Accord- 
ingly, he adopted defensive tactics of a sort that was copied 
afterwards by the French as a fixed policy. He accepted 
battle to leeward, drawing off in a slanting line from his 
enemy with the idea of catching the English van as it ad- 
vanced to the attack unsupported by the rest of the fleet, and 
crippling it so severely that the attack would not be pressed. 
As it turned out, a shift of the wind gave him the chance to 
fall heavily upon the English van, but a second shift gave 
back the weather gage to the English and the two fleets be- 
came fiercely engaged at close quarters. Blake, hearing the 
guns, left his sick bed and with his own available force of 
18 ships sailed out to join battle. The sight of this fresh 
squadron flying Blake's flag, turned the fortune of battle de- 
cisively. The Dutch escaped destruction only by finding 
safety in the shallows of the Flemish coast, where the English 
ships could not follow. 

After this defeat the Dutch were almost at the end of their 
resources and sued for peace, but Cromwell's ruthless demands 
amounted to a practical loss of independence, which even a 
bankrupt nation could not accept. Accordingly, every nerve 
was strained to build a fleet that might yet beat the English. 
The latter, for their part, were equally determined not to lose 
the fruits of their hard won victories. Since Blake's active 



RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER 177 

share in the battle of the Gabbard aggravated his wound so 
severely that he was carried ashore more nearly dead than 
alive, Monk retained actual command. 

Monk attempted to maintain a close blockade of the Dutch 
coast and to prevent a junction between Tromp's main fleet 
at Flushing and a force of thirty ships at Amsterdam. In 
this, however, he was outgeneraled by Tromp, who succeeded 
in taking the sea with the greatest of all Dutch fleets, 120 
men of war. The English and the Dutch speedily clashed 
in the last, and perhaps the most furiously contested, battle of 
the war, the "Battle of Scheviningen." The action began at 
six in the morning of July 30, 1653. Tromp had the weather 
gage, but Monk, instead of awaiting his onslaught, tacked 
towards him and actually cut through the Dutch line. Tromp 
countered by tacking also, in order to keep his windward 
position, and this maneuver was repeated three times by 
Tromp and Monk, and the two great fleets sailed in great 
zigzag courses down the Dutch coast a distance of forty miles, 
with bitter fighting going on at close range between the two 
lines. Early in the action the renowned Tromp was killed, 
but his flag was kept flying and there was no flinching on the 
part of his admirals. About one o'clock a shift of the wind 
gave the weather gage to the English. Some of the Dutch 
captains then showed the white feather and tried to escape. 
This compelled the retirement of DeWith, who had succeeded 
to the command, and who, as he retreated, fired on his own 
fugitives as well as on the English. As usual in these battles 
with the Dutch, the English had been forced to pay a high 
price for their victory. Their fleet was so shattered that 
they were obliged to lift the blockade and return home to 
refit. But for the Dutch it was the last effort. Again they 
sued for peace. Cromwell drove a hard bargain; he insisted 
on every claim England had ever made against the Nether- 
lands before the war, but on this occasion he agreed to leave 
Holland her ind&pendence. 

Thus in less than two years the First Dutch War came to 
an end. In the words of Mr. Hannay, 1 the English historian, 
*A Short History of the Royal Navy, Vol. I, p. 217. 



178 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

its "importance as an epoch in the history of the English 
Navy can hardly be exaggerated. Though short, for it lasted 
barely twenty-two months, it was singularly fierce and full of 
battles. Yet its interest is not derived mainly from the mere 
amount of fighting but from the character of it. This was 
the first of our naval wars conducted by steady, continuous, 
coherent campaigns. Hitherto our operations on the sea had 
been of the nature of adventures by single ships and small 
squadrons, with here and there a great expedition sent out to 
capture some particular port or island." 

As to the intensity of the fighting, it is worth noting that 
in this short period six great battles took place between fleets 
numbering as a rule from 70 to 120 ships on a side. By com- 
parison it may be remarked that at Trafalgar the total British 
force numbered 27 ships of the line and the Allies, 33. Nor 
were the men of war of Blake and Tromp the small types of 
an earlier day. In 1652 the ship of the line had become the 
unit of the fleet as truly as it was in 1805. It is true that 
Blake's ships were not the equal of Nelson's huge "first rates," 
because the "two-decker" was then the most powerful type. 
The first three-decker in the English navy was launched in the 
year of Blake's death, 1657. The fact remains, however, that 
these fleet actions of the Dutch Wars took place on a scale 
unmatched by any of the far better known engagements of 
the 1 8th or early 19th century. 

A curious naval weapon survived from the day when 
Howard drove Medina Sidonia from Calais roads, the fire- 
ship, or "brander." This was used by both English and 
Dutch. Its usefulness, of course, was confined to the side 
that held the windward position, and even an opponent to lee- 
ward could usually, if he kept his head, send out boats to 
grapple and tow the brander out of harm's way. In the battle 
of Scheveningen, however, Dutch fireships cost the English 
two fine ships, together with a Dutch prize, and very nearly 
destroyed the old flagship of Blake, the Triumph. She was 
saved only by the extraordinary exertions of her captain, 
who received mortal injury from the flames he fought so 
courageously. 



RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER 179 

This First Dutch War is interesting in what it reveals 
of the advance in tactics. Tromp well deserves his title as 
the "Father of Naval Tactics," and he undoubtedly taught 
Blake and Monk a good deal by the rough schooling of bat- 
tle, but they proved apt pupils. From even the brief summary 
of these great battles just given, it is evident that Dutch and 
English did not fight each other in helter skelter fashion. In 
fact, there is revealed a great advance in coordination over 
the work of the English in the campaign of the Armada. 
These fleets worked as units. This does not mean that they 
were not divided into squadrons. A force of ioo ships of 
the line required division and subdivision, and considerable 
freedom of movement was left to division and squadron com- 
manders under the general direction of the commander in 
chief, but they were all working consciously together. Just 
as at Trafalgar Nelson formed his fleet in two lines (origi- 
nally planned as three) and allowed his second in command 
a free hand in carrying out the task assigned him, so Tromp 
and Blake operated their fleets in squadrons — Tromp usually 
had five — and expected of their subordinates responsibility 
and initiative. All this is in striking contrast with the practice 
that paralyzed tactics in the latter 17th and 18th centuries, 
which sacrificed everything to a rigid line of battle in column 
ahead, and required every movement to emanate from the 
commander in chief. 

Although details about the great battles of the First Dutch 
War are scanty, there is enough recorded to show that both 
sides used the line ahead as the normal battle line. It is 
equally clear, however, that they repeatedly broke through 
each other's lines and aimed at concentration, or destroying in 
detail. These two related principles, which had to be redis- 
covered toward the end of the 18th century, were practiced by 
Tromp, de Ruyter, and Blake. Their work has not the ad- 
vantage of being as near our day as the easy, one-sided vic- 
tories over the demoralized French navy in the Revolutionary 
and Napoleonic era, but the day may come when the British 
will regard the age of Blake as the naval epoch of which 
they have the most reason to be proud. Then England met 



180 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

the greatest seamen of the day led by one of the greatest ad- 
mirals of history and won a bitterly fought contest by virtue 
of better ships and the spirit of Cromwell's "Ironsides." 

Porto Farina and Santa Cruz 

Nor did the age of Blake end with the First Dutch War. 
As soon as the admiral was able to go aboard ship, Cromwell 
sent him with a squadron into the Mediterranean to enforce 
respect for the Commonwealth from the Italian governments 
and the Barbary states. He conducted his mission with emk 
nent success. Although the Barbary pirates did not course 
the sea in great fleets as in the palmy days of Barbarossa, they 
were still a source of peril to Christian traders. Blake was 
received civilly by the Dey of Algiers but negotiations did not 
result satisfactorily. At Tunis he was openly flouted. The 
Pasha drew up his nine cruisers inside Porto Farina and 
defied the English admiral to do his worst. Blake left for a 
few days to gain the effect of surprise and replenish provi- 
sions. On April 4, 1655, he suddenly reappeared and stood 
in to the attack. 

The harbor of Porto Farina was regarded as impregnable. 
The entrance was narrow and the shores lined with castles 
and batteries. As Blake foresaw, the wind that took him in 
would roll the battle smoke upon the enemy. In a short time 
he had silenced the fire of the forts and then sent boarding 
parties against the Tunisian ships, which were speedily taken 
and burnt. Then he took his squadron out again, having 
destroyed the entire Tunisian navy, shattered the forts, and 
suffered only a trifling loss. This exploit resounded through- 
out the Mediterranean. Algiers was quick to follow Tunis, 
in yielding to Blake's demands. It is characteristic of this 
officer that he should have made the attack on Tunis entirely 
without orders from Cromwell, and it is equally characteristic 
of the latter that he was heartily pleased with the initiative 
of his admiral in carrying out the spirit rather than the letter 
of his instructions. 

Meanwhile Cromwell had been wavering between a war 



RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER 181 

against France or Spain. The need of a capture of money 
perhaps influenced him to turn against Spain, for this coun- 
try still drew from her western colonies a tribute of gold 
and silver, which naturally would fall a prey to the power that 
controlled the sea. One month after Blake's exploit at Tunis, 
another English naval expedition set out to the West Indies 
to take Santo Domingo. Although Jamaica was seized and 
thereafter became an English possession, the expedition as 
a whole was a disgraceful failure, and the leaders, Penn and 
Venables, were promptly clapped by Cromwell into the Tower 
on their return. This stroke against Spain amounted to a 
declaration of war, and on Blake's return to England he was 
ordered to blockade Cadiz. One detachment of the plate 
fleet fell into the hands of his blockading ships and the silver 
ingots were dispatched to London. Blake continued his 
blockade in an open roadstead for six months, through au- 
tumn and winter, an unheard of thing in those days and 
exceedingly difficult. Blake was himself ill, his ships were 
not the copper-bottomed ones of a hundred years later, and 
there was not, as in later days, an English base at Gibraltar. 
But he never relaxed his vigilance. 

In April (1657) he learned that another large plate fleet 
had arrived at Santa Cruz, Teneriffe. Immediately he sailed 
thither to take or destroy it. If Porto Farina had been re- 
garded as safe from naval attack, Santa Cruz was far more 
so. A deep harbor, with a narrow, funnel entrance, and 
backed by mountains, it is liable to dead calms or squally 
bursts of wind from the land. In addition to its natural de- 
fenses it was heavily fortified. Blake, however, reckoned 
on coming in with a flowing tide and a sea breeze that, as at 
Porto Farina, would blow his smoke upon the defenses. He 
rightly guessed that if he sailed close enough under the castles 
at the harbor entrance their guns could not be sufficiently de- 
pressed to hit his ships, and as he saw the galleons and their 
escorts lined up along the shore he perceived also that they 
were masking the fire of their own shore batteries. For the 
most difficult part of his undertaking, the exit from the har- 



182 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

bor, he trusted to the ebbing tide with the chance of a shift 
in the wind in his favor. 

Early on the morning of April 20th (1657) he sailed in. 
As he had judged, the fire of the forts did little damage. 
By eight o'clock the English ships were all at their appointed 
stations and fighting. During the entire day Blake continued 
his work of destruction till it was complete, and at dusk 
drifted out on the ebb. Some writers mention a favoring 
land breeze that helped to extricate the English, but accord- 
ing to Blake's own words, "the wind blew right into the 
bay." In spite of this head wind the ships that were crippled 
were warped or towed out and not one was lost. The Eng- 
lish suffered in the entire action only 50 killed and 120 
wounded, and repairs were so easily made that Blake returned 
to his blockading station at once. 

This was the greatest of Blake's feats as it also was his 
last. All who heard of it — friend or enemy — pronounced it 
as without parallel in the history of ships. A few months 
later Blake was given leave to return home. He had long 
been a sick man, but his name alone was worth a fleet and 
Cromwell had not been able to spare him. As it happened, 
he did not live long enough to see England again. Cromwell, 
who knew the worth of his faithful admiral, gave him a 
funeral of royal dignity and interment in Westminster Abbey. 

Blake never showed, perhaps, great strategic insight — 
Tromp and de Ruyter were his superiors there, as was also 
Nelson — but he, more than any other, won for England her 
mastery of the sea, and no other can boast his record of great 
victories. These he won partly by skill and forethought but 
chiefly by intrepidity. We can do no better than leave his 
fame in the words of the Royalist historian, Clarendon — a 
political enemy — who says : "He quickly made himself signal 
there (on the sea) and was the first man who declined the 
old track . . . and disproved those rules that had long been 
in practice, to keep his ships and men out of danger, which 
had been held in former times a point of great ability and 
circumspection, as if the principal requisite in the captain of 
a ship had been to come home safe again. He was the first 



RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER 183 

man who brought ships to contemn castles on shore, which 
had been thought ever very formidable. . . . He was the 
first that infused that proportion of courage into the seamen 
by making them see what mighty things they could do< if they 
were resolved, and taught them to fight in fire as well as on 
water. And though he hath been very well imitated and 
followed, he was the first that drew the copy of naval courage 
and bold resolute achievement." 

The chaos that followed the death of the Protector resulted 
in Monk's bringing over the exiled Stuart king — Charles II. 
Thereafter Round Head and Royalist served together in the 
British navy. An important effect of the Restoration was 
organization of a means of training the future officers of the 
fleet. The Navy as a profession may be said to date from 
this time, in contrast with the practice of using merchant 
skippers and army officers, which had prevailed to so great 
a degree hitherto. Under the new system "young gentlemen" 
were sent to sea as "King's Letter Boys" — midshipmen — to 
learn the ways of the navy and to grow up in it as a prepara- 
tion for command. This was an excellent reform but it re- 
sulted in making the navy the property of a social caste from 
that day to this, and it made promotion, for a century and 
more, largely subject to family influence. 

Another effect of the Restoration was to break down the 
fighting efficiency of the fleet as it had been in the days of 
Blake. The veterans of the First Dutch War fought with 
their old time courage and discipline, but the newer elements 
did not show the same devotion and initiative. The effect 
on the material was still worse, for the fleet became a prey 
to the cynical dishonesty that Charles II inspired in every de- 
partment of his government. 

The Second Dutch War 

Five years after Charles II became king, England was in- 
volved in another war with the Netherlands. There was still 
bad feeling between the two peoples, and trading companies 
in the far east or west kept up a guerilla warfare which 



184 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

flooded both governments with complaints. The chief cause 
seems to have been the desire of the English Guinea Com- 
pany to get rid of their Dutch competitors who persistently- 
undersold them in the slave markets of the West Indies. Be- 
fore there was any declaration of war an English squadron 
was sent out to attack the Dutch company's settlement on the 
West African coast. After this it crossed the Atlantic and 
took New Amsterdam, which thereafter became New York. 
The Dutch retaliated by sending out one of their squadrons 
to retake their African post and threaten the Atlantic colonies. 
In March, 1665, war was declared. 

In this conflict the relative strengths of the two navies were 
about the same as in the previous war. The Dutch had made 
improvements in their ships, but they still suffered from the 
lack of unity in organization and spirit. The first engage- 
ment was the battle of Lowestoft, on June 3, 1665. The 
English fleet was under the personal command of the Duke 
of York, later James II ; the Dutch were led by de Ruyter. The 
two forces numbered from 80 to 100 ships each, and strung 
out as they were, must have extended over nearly ten miles 
of sea. The Duke of York formed his fleet in the pattern 
that he set by his own "Fighting Instructions," which gov- 
erned the tactics of all navies thereafter for a hundred years, 
namely, the entire force drawn up in single line. This line 
bore down abreast toward the enemy until it reached gunshot, 
then swung into line ahead and sailed on a course parallel to 
that of the enemy. De Ruyter arranged his fleet accordingly, 
and the two long lines passed each other on opposite tacks 
three times, cannonading furiously at close range. This 
meant that the force was distributed evenly along the enemy's 
line and as against an evenly matched force these tactics could 
result, as a rule, only in mere inconclusive artillery duels 
which each side would claim as victories. In the battle of 
Lowestoft, however, several of the captains in the Dutch 
center flinched at the third passing and bore up to leeward, 
leaving a wide gap in de Ruyter's line. The English broke 
through at this point and hammered the weakened Dutch line 
in the center with a superior force. This was the decisive 



RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER 185 

point in the battle and de Ruyter was forced to retreat. The 
Dutch would have suffered even greater loss than they did 
had it not been for the masterly fashion in which Cornelius 
Tromp — son of the famous Martin Tromp — covered the 
retreat 

The defeat of the Dutch was due to the bad conduct of the 
captains in the center, four of whom were shot by order of 
de- Ruyter and others dismissed from the service. It is in- 
teresting to note that while the first half of the battle was 
fought on the formal lines that were soon to be the cast iron 
rule of conduct for the British navy, and led to nothing con- 
clusive; the second half was characterized by the breaking of 
the enemy's line, in the older style of Blake, and led to a 
pronounced victory. 

At this time Louis XIV had pledged himself to give aid 
to the Netherlands in case of attack by a third Power. But 
when the Dutch and his own States General called on him 
to make good his promise he offered more promises and no 
fulfillment. The rumor of an approaching French squadron, 
which was to make junction with de Ruyter, caused the Eng- 
lish government to make the grave mistake of detaching 
Prince Rupert with 20 ships to look for the mythical French 
force. This division left Monk, who was again in command 
of the fleet, with only 57 ships. Hearing that de Ruyter was 
anchored on the Flanders coast, Monk went out to find him. 
De Ruyter left his anchorage to meet the English, and on June 
1, 1666, the two forces met in mid-Channel, between Dun- 
kirk and the Downs. As the Dutch force heavily outnum- 
bered him — nearly two to one — Monk might have been ex- 
pected to avoid fighting, but he acted in the spirit of Blake. 
Having the windward position he decided that he could strike 
the advanced division under Tromp and maul it severely be- 
fore the rest of the Dutch could succor it. Accordingly he 
boldly headed for the enemy's van. When Monk attacked ha 
had only about 35 ships in hand, for the rest were straggling 
behind too far to help. Thus began the famous "Four Days' 
Battle," characterized by Mahan as "the most remarkable, in 



186 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

some of its aspects that has ever been fought upon the 
ocean." x 

The fighting was close and furious and in its unparalleled 
duration numbers were bound to tell. On the third day Monk 
retreated to the Thames, but on being joined by Rupert's 
squadron immediately sallied forth to do battle again. On 
this day, June 4, the Dutch succeeded in cutting through 
his formation and putting him between two fires. Indeed 
Monk escaped destruction only by breaking through his ring 
of enemies and finding refuge in the Thames. The Dutch 
had won a great victory, for the English had lost some twenty 
ships and 5000 in killed and wounded. But Monk was right 
in feeling a sense of pride in the fight that he had made against 
great odds. The losses that he had inflicted were out of all 
proportion to the relative strength of the two forces. Un- 
fortunately the new spirit that was coming into the navy of 
the Restoration was evidenced by the fact that a number of 
English captains, finding the action too hot for them, deserted 
their commander in chief. On the Dutch side de Ruyter's 
handling of his fleet was complicated by the conduct of Cornel- 
ius Tromp. This officer believed that he, not de Ruyter, should 
have been made commander of the Dutch fleet and in this 
action as in the next, acted with no regard for his chief's 
orders. 

As a consequence of the Four Days' Battle, Dutchmen again 
controlled the Channel and closed the mouth of the Thames 
to trade. The English strained every nerve to create a fleet 
that should put an end to this humiliating and disastrous situa- 
tion. The preparations were carried out with such speed that 
on July 22 (1666), Monk and Rupert anchored off the end 
of the Gunfleet shoal with a fleet of about 80 ships of the 
line and frigates. On the 25th the English sighted de Ruyter, 
with a fleet slightly larger in numbers, in the broad part 
of the Thames estuary. Monk, forming his fleet in the long 
line ahead, sailed to the attack. The action that followed is 
called the "Battle of St. James's Day" or the "Gunfleet." 

Whether or not Monk was influenced by his princely col- 
*The Influence of Sea Power upon History, p. 125. 



RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER 187 

league it is impossible to say, but the tactics of this engage- 
ment do not suggest the Monk of earlier battles. He followed 
the "Fighting Instructions" and in spite of them won a vic- 
tory, but it might have been far more decisive. The English 
bore down in line abreast, then formed line ahead on reaching 
gunshot, the van, center, and rear, engaging respectively the 
Dutch van, center, and rear. In these line ahead attacks the 




THE THAMES ESTUARY 



rear usually straggled. Tromp, commanding the Dutch rear, 
saw his chance to attack Smith, commanding the English rear, 
before his squadron was in proper formation. Smith re- 
treated, and Tromp, eager to win a victory all by himself, 
abandoned the rest of the Dutch fleet and pursued Smith. 
Thus the action broke into two widely separated parts. The 



188 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

English van and center succeeded in forcing the corresponding 
Dutch divisions to retreat, and if Monk had turned to the 
help of Smith he might have taken or destroyed all of the 
39 ships in Tromp's division. Instead, he and Rupert went 
careering on in pursuit of the enemy directly ahead of them. 
Eventually de Ruyter's ships found refuge in shallow water 
and then Monk turned to catch Tromp. But the latter proved 
too clever for his adversaries and slipped between them to 
an anchorage alongside of de Ruyter. 

Although the victory was not nearly so decisive as it should 
have been with the opportunity offered, nevertheless it served 
the need of the hour. De Ruyter was no longer ^able to 
blockade the Thames and the Straits of Dover. And Monk, 
following up his success, carried the war to the enemy's coast, 
where he burned a merchant fleet of 160 vessels in the road- 
stead of the island of Terschelling, and destroyed one of the 
towns. Early in 1666 active operations on both sides dwin- 
dled down, and Charles, anxious to use naval appropriations 
for other purposes, allowed the fleet to fall into a condition 
of unreadiness for service. One of the least scandals in this 
corrupt age was the unwillingness or inability of the officials 
to pay the seamen their wages. In consequence large numbers 
of English prisoners in Holland actually preferred taking- 
service in the Dutch navy rather than accepting exchange, on 
the ground that the Dutch government paid its men while 
their own did not. 

Early in June, 1667, de Ruyter took advantage of the 
condition of the English fleet by inflicting perhaps the greatest 
humiliation on England that she has ever suffered. Entering 
the Thames unopposed, he was prevented from attacking Lon- 
don only by unfavorable wind and tide. He then turned his 
attention to the dockyards of Chatham and burnt or captured 
seven great ships of the line, besides numerous smaller craft, 
carried off the naval stores at Sheerness, and then for the 
next six weeks kept a blockade on the Thames and the eastern 
and southern coasts of England. This mortifying situation 
continued until the signing of the "Peace of Breda" concluded, 
the war. 



RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER 189 

The Third Dutch War 

Less than five years later Charles again made war on the 
Netherlands. For this there was not the shadow of excuse, 
but Louis XIV saw fit to attack the Dutch, and Charles was 
ever his willing vassal. The English began hostilities without 
any declaration of war by a piratical attack on a Dutch 
convoy. 

At this juncture Holland was reduced to the last extremity. 
Attacked on her land frontiers by France, then the dominating 
military power, and on her sea frontiers by England, the 
strongest naval power, she seemed to have small chance to 
survive. But her people responded with a heroism worthy 
of her splendid history. They opened their dykes to check 
the armies of invasion and strained every nerve to equip a 
fleet large enough to cope with the combined navies of France 
and England. In this Third Dutch War four great naval 
battles were fought: that of Solebay, May 28, 1672, the two 
engagements off Schooneveldt, May 28 and June 4, 1673, 
and that of the Texel, August 11, 1673. 

In all of these the honors go to the Dutch and their great 
admiral, de Ruyter. Since these actions did not restore the 
Netherlands to their old-time position or check the ascendancy 
of England, they need not be discussed individually here. 
The outstanding feature of the whole story is the surpassing 
skill and courage of de Ruyter in the face of overwhelming 
odds. In this war he showed the full stature of his genius 
as never before, and won his title as the greatest seaman of 
the 17th century. After his death one must wait till the 
day of Suffren and Nelson to find men worthy to rank with 
him. 

In this campaign de Ruyter showed his powers not only as 
a tactician but as a strategist. In the words of Mahan, the 
Dutch "made a strategic use of their dangerous coast and 
shoals, upon which were based their sea operations. To this 
they were forced by the desperate odds under which they were 
fighting ; but they did not use their shoals as a mere shelter, — ; 



190 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

the warfare they waged was the defensive-offensive. When 
the wind was fair for the allies to attack, de Ruyter kept under 
cover of his islands, or at least on ground where the enemy 
dared not follow ; but when the wind served so that he might 
attack in his own way he turned and fell upon them." x That 
is, instead of accepting the tame role of a "fleet in being" and 
hiding in a safe harbor, de Ruyter took and held the sea, 
always on the aggressive, always alert to catch his enemy in 
a position of divided forces or exposed flank and strike hard. 
His master, Martin Tromp, is regarded as the father of the 
line ahead formation for battle, but he undoubtedly taught de 
Ruyter its limitations as well as its advantages, and there is no 
trace of the stupid formalism of the Duke of York's regula- 
tions in de Ruyter's brilliant work. 

At this time he had no worthy opponent. As Monk was 
dead, the Duke of York had again assumed active command 
with Rupert as his lieutenant. Although the Duke was hon- 
estly devoted to the navy he was dull-witted, and in spite of 
the advantage of numbers and the dogged courage of officers 
and men which so often in English history has made up for 
stupid leadership, he was wholly unable to cope with de 
Ruyter's genius. As for the French navy, their ships were 
superb, the best in Europe, but their officers had no experience 
and apparently small desire for close fighting. At all events, 
despite the odds against him, de Ruyter defeated the allies 
in all four battles, prevented their landing an army of invasion, 
and broke up their attempt to blockade the coast. 

The war was unpopular in England and as it met with ill 
success it became more so. After the battle of the Texel, in 
1673, active operations died down to practically nothing, and 
at the beginning of the year England made peace. By this 
time Holland had managed to find other allies on the Conti- 
nent — Spain and certain German states — and while she had 
to continue her struggle against Louis XIV by land she 
was relieved of the menace of her great enemy on the sea. 
Fifteen years later, by a curious freak of history, a Dutch 

1 Influence of Sea Power upon History, p. 144. 



RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER 191 

prince became King William III of England, and the two 
old enemies became united in alliance. But the Netherlands 
had exhausted themselves by their protracted struggle. They 
had saved their independence, but after the close of the 
17th century they ceased to be a world power of any 
consequence. 

The persistent enmity of the French king for the Dutch 
gained nothing for France but everything for England. Un- 
wittingly he poured out his resources in money and men to 
the end that England should become the great colonial and 
maritime rival of France. As a part of her spoils England 
had gained New York and New Jersey, thus linking her north- 
ern and southern American colonies, and she had taken St. 
Helena as a base for her East Indies merchantmen. She had 
tightened her hold in India, and by repeatedly chastising the 
Barbary pirates had won immunity for her traders in the Medi- 
terranean. At the beginning of the Second Dutch War Monk 
had said with brutal frankness, "What matters this or that 
reason? What we want is more of the trade which the Dutch 
have." This, the richest prize of all, fell from the hands of 
the Dutch into those of the English. During the long drawn 
war which went on after the English peace of 1674, while 
Holland with her allies fought against Louis XIV, the great 
bulk of the Dutch carrying trade passed from the Dutch to 
the English flag. The close of the 17th century, therefore, 
found England fairly started on her career as an ocean em- 
pire, united by sea power. Her navy, despite the vices' it had 
caught from the Stuart regime, had become firmly established 
as a permanent institution with a definite organization. By 
this time every party recognized its essential importance to 
England's future. 

Nevertheless, whatever satisfaction may be felt by men of 
English speech in this rapid growth of England's power and 
prestige as a result of the three wars with the Dutch, one 
cannot avoid the other side of the picture. A people small in 
numbers but great in energy and genius was hounded to the 
point of extinction by the greed of its powerful neighbors. 



192 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

Peace-loving, asking merely to be let alone, the only crime of 
the Dutch was to excite the envy of the English and the 
French. 

REFERENCES 
See next chapter, page 221. 



CHAPTER X 

RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER [Continued]. 

WARS WITH FRANCE TO THE FRENCH 

REVOLUTION 

The effect of the expulsion of James II from the throne of 
England coupled with the accession of the Dutch prince, 
William of Orange, was to make England change sides and 
take the leadership in the coalition opposed to Louis XIV. 
From this time on, for over 125 years, England was involved 
in a series of wars with France. They began with the threat 
of Louis to dominate Europe and ended with the similar 
threat on the part of Napoleon. In all this conflict the sea 
power of England was a factor of paramount importance. 
Even when the fighting was continental rather than naval, 
the ability of Great Britain to cut France off from her over- 
seas possessions resulted in the transfer of enormous tracts 
of territory to the British Empire. During the 18th century, 
the territorial extent of the expire grew by leaps and bounds, 
with the single important loss of the American colonies. And' 
even this brought no positive advantage to France for it did 
not weaken her adversary's grip on the sea. 

The War of the League of Augsburg 

The accession of William III was the signal for England's 
entry into the war of the League of Augsburg (1688-1697) 
against France, and the effort of the French king to put James 
II back again upon the English throne. By this time the 
French navy had been so greatly strengthened that at the 
outset it outnumbered the combined fleets of the English and 
the Dutch. It boasted the only notable admiral of this period, 

193 



194 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



Tourville, but it missed every opportunity to do something 
decisive. It failed to keep William from landing in England 
with an army ; it failed also to keep the English from landing 
and supplying an army in Ireland, where they raised the siege 
of Londonderry and won the decisive victory of the Boyne. 
On the other hand the British navy was handled with equal 
irresolution and blindness in strategy. It accomplished what 
it did in keeping communications open with Ireland through 




THREE-DECKED SHIP OF THE LINE, l8TH CENTURY 

the mistakes of the French, and its leaders seemed to be 
equally unaware of the importance of winning definitely the 
control of the sea. 

If the naval strategy on both sides was feeble the tactics 
were equally so. The contrast between the fighting of Blake, 
Monk, Tromp and de Ruyter and that of the admirals of this 
period is striking. For example, on May i, 1689, the Eng- 
lish admiral Herbert and the French admiral Chateaurenault 
fought an indecisive action in Bantry Bay, Ireland. After 
considerable powder had been shot away without the loss of 
a ship on either side, the French went back to protect their 



RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER 195 

transports in the bay; Herbert also withdrew, and was made 
Earl of Torrington for his "victory." This same officer com- 
manding a Dutch and English fleet encountered the French 
under Tourville off Beachy Head on the south coast of Eng ; 
land (July 10, 1690). It is true that Tourville's force was 
stronger, but Torrington acted with no enterprise and was 
thoroughly beaten. At the same time the French admiral 
showed lack of push in following up his victory, which might 
have been crushing. By this time the line ahead order of 
fighting had become a fetich on both sides. The most noted 
naval battle of this war is that of La Hogue (May 29, 1692), 
which has been celebrated as a great British victory. In this 
action an allied fleet of 99 were opposed to a French fleet of 
44 under Tourville. Tourville offered battle under such odds 
only because he had imperative orders from his king to fight 
the enemy. During the action the French did not lose a 
single ship, but in the four days' retreat the vessels became 
separated in trying to find shelter and fifteen were destroyed 
or taken. This was a severe blow to the the French navy but 
by no means decisive. The subsequent inactivity of the 
fleet was due to the demands of the war on land. 

As the war became more and more a continental affair, 
Louis was compelled to utilize all his resources for his mili- 
tary campaigns. For this reason the splendid fleet with 
which he had begun the war gradually disappeared from the 
sea. Some of these men of war were lent to great privateers- 
men like Jean Bart and Du Guay Trouin, who took out power- 
ful squadrons of from five to ten ships of the line, strong 
enough to overcome the naval escorts of a British convoy, 
and ravaged English commerce. In this matter of protect- 
ing shipping the naval strategy was as vacillating and blind 
as in everything else. Nevertheless no mere commerce de- 
stroying will serve to win the control of the sea, and despite 
the losses in trade and the low ebb to which English naval 
efficiency had sunk, the British flag still dominated the ocean 
routes while the greater part of the French fleet rotted in port. 

In this war of the League of Augsburg, Louis XIV was 
fighting practically all Europe, and the strain was too great 



196 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

for a nation already weakened by a long series of wars. By 
the terms of peace which he found himself obliged to accept, 
he lost nearly everything that he had gained by conquest 
during his long reign. 

Wars of the Spanish and the Austrian Succession 

After a brief interval of peace war blazed out again over 
the question whether a French Bourbon should be king of 
Spain, — the War of the Spanish Succession, 1702- 171 3. 
England's aim in this war was to acquire some of the Spanish 
colonies in America and to prevent any loss of trading privi- 
leges hitherto enjoyed by the English and the Dutch. But 
as it turned out nothing of importance was accomplished in 
the western hemisphere except by the terms of peace. The 
French and Spanish attempted no major operations by sea. 
But the English navy captured Minorca, with its important 
harbor of Port Marion, and Rooke, with more initiative than 
he had ever shown before in his career, took Gibraltar (Au- 
gust 4, 1704). These two prizes made Great Britain for the 
first time a Mediterranean power, and the fact that she held 
the gateway to the inland sea was of great importance in sub- 
sequent naval history. 

In addition to these captures the terms of peace (the Treaty 
of Utrecht) yielded to England from the French Newfound- 
land, the Hudson Bay territory, and Nova Scotia. All that the 
French had left on the eastern coast of Canada was Cape 
Breton Island, with Louisburg, which was the key to the St. 
Lawrence. As for commercial privileges, England had gained 
from the Portuguese, who had been allies in the war, a prac- 
tical monopoly of their carrying trade; and from France she 
had taken the entire monopoly of the slave trade to the Span- 
ish American colonies which had been formerly granted by 
Spain to France. Holland got nothing out of the war as 
affecting her interests at sea, — not even a trading post. Her 
alliance with Great Britain had become as some one has 
called it, that of "the giant and the dwarf." At the conclu- 
sion of the War of the Spanish Succession, to quote the words 



RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER 197 

of Mahan, "England was the sea power; there was no< second." 
In this war as in the preceding, French privateersmen made 
great inroads on British commerce, and some of these priva- 
teering operations were conducted on a grand scale. For ex- 
ample, Du Guay Trouin took a squadron of six ships of the 
line and two frigates, together with 2000 troops, across the 
Atlantic and attacked Rio Janeiro. He had little difficulty 
in forcing its submission and extorting a ransom of $400,000. 
The activities of the privateers led to a clause in the treaty O'tf 
peace requiring the French to destroy the fortifications of 
the port of Dunkirk, which was notorious as the nest of 
these corsairs. 

The War of the Austrian Succession, 1740- 1748, was an- 
other of the dynastic quarrels of this age, with France and 
Spain arrayed against England. It has no naval interest for 
our purposes here. The peace of 1748, however, leaving 
things exactly as they were when the war began, settled none 
of the existing grudge between Great Britain and France. 
Eight years later, hostilities began again in the Seven Years' 
War, 1756-1763, in which Great Britain entered on the side 
of Prussia against a great coalition of Continental powers 
headed by France. 

The Seven Years' War 

The naval interest of this war is centered in the year 1759, 
when France, having lost Louisburg on account of England's 
control of the sea, decided to concentrate naval and military 
forces on an invasion of England. Before the plans for this 
projected thrust were completed, Quebec also had fallen to 
the British. The attempted invasion of 1759 is not so well 
known as that of Napoleon in 1805, but it furnished the pat- 
tern that Napoleon copied and had a better chance of success 
than his. In brief, a small squadron under the famous priva- 
teer Thurot was to threaten the Scotch and Irish coasts, act- 
ing as a diversion to draw off the British fleet. Meanwhile 
the squadron at Toulon was to dodge the British off that port, 
pass the Straits and join Conflans, who had the main French 



198 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

fleet at Brest. The united forces were then to cover the 
crossing of the troops in transports and flatboats to the English 
coast. 

This plan was smashed by Admiral Hawke in one of the 
most daring feats in British naval annals. Thurot got away 
but did not divert any of the main force guarding the Chan- 
nel. The Toulon fleet also eluded the English for a time but 
went to pieces outside the Straits largely on account of mis- 
management on the part of its commander. The remnants 
were either captured or driven to shelter in neutral ports by 
the English squadron under Boscawen. On November 9, a 
heavy gale and the necessities of the fleet compelled Hawke 
to lift his blockade of Brest and take shelter in Torbay, after 
leaving four frigates to watch the port. On the 14th, Con- 
flans, discovering that his enemy was gone, came out, with 
the absurd idea of covering the transportation of the French 
army before Hawke should appear again. That very day 
Hawke returned to renew the blockade, and learning that 
Conflans had been seen heading southeast, decided rightly that 
the French admiral was bound for Quiberon Bay to make an 
easy capture of a small British squadron there under Duff 
before beginning the transportation of the invading army. 

For five days pursuer and pursued drifted in calms. On 
the 19th a stiff westerly gale enabled Hawke to overtake Con- 
flans, who was obliged to shorten sail for fear of arriving at 
his destination in the darkness. The morning of the 20th 
found the fleets in sight of each other but scattered. All the 
forenoon the rival admirals made efforts to gather their units 
for battle. A frigate leading the British pursuit fired signal 
guns to warn Duff of the enemy's presence, and the latter, 
cutting his cables, was barely able to get out in time to escape 
the French fleet and join Hawke. Conflans then decided that 
the English were too strong for him, and abandoning his idea 
of offering battle, signaled a general retreat and led the way 
into Quiberon Bay. 

Hawke instantly ordered pursuit. The importance of this 
signal can be realized only by taking into account the tre- 
mendous gale blowing and the exceedingly dangerous char- 



RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER 199 

acter of the approach to Quiberon Bay, lined as it was with 
sunken rocks. Hawke had little knowledge of the channels 
but he reasoned that where a French ship could go an Eng- 
lish one could follow, and the perils of the entry could not 
outweigh in his mind the importance of crushing the navy 
of France then and there. The small British superiority of 
numbers which Conflans feared was greatly aggravated by the 
conditions of his flight. The slower ships in his rear were 
crushed by the British in superior force and the English com- 
ing alongside the French on their lee side were able to use 
their heaviest batteries while the French, heeled over by the 
gale, had to keep their lowest tier of ports closed for fear 
of being sunk. One of their ships tried the experiment of 
opening this broadside and promptly foundered. 

Darkness fell on a scene of wild confusion. Two of the 
British vessels were lost on a reef, but daylight revealed the 
fact that the French had scattered in all directions. Only five 
of their ships had been destroyed and one taken, but the or- 
ganization and the morale were completely shattered. The 
idea of invasion thus came to a sudden end in Quiberon Bay. 
The daring and initiative of Hawke in defying weather and 
rocks in his pursuit of Conflans is the admirable and signifi- 
cant fact of this story, for the actual fighting amounted to 
little. It is the sort of thing that marked the spirit of the 
Dutch Wars and of Blake at Santa Cruz, and is strikingly 
different from the tame and stupid work of other admirals, 
English or French, in his own day. 

The Seven Years' War ended in terms of the deepest hu- 
miliation for France — a "Cathaginian peace." She was com- 
pelled to renounce to England all of Canada with the islands 
of the St. Lawrence, the Ohio valley and the entire area east 
of the Mississippi except New Orleans. Spain, which had 
entered the war on the side of France in 1761, gave up Florida 
in exchange for Havana, captured by the English, and in the 
West Indies several of the Lesser Antilles came under the 
British flag. It is hardly necessary to point out that the loss 
of these overseas possessions on such a tremendous scale was 



200 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

due to the ability of the British navy to cut the communica- 
tions between them and the mother country. 

Naval administration in England at this time was corrupt, 
and the admirals, with the notable exception of Hawke, were 
lacking in enterprise; they were still slaves to the "Fighting 
Instructions." But in all these respects the French were far 
worse, and the British government never lost sight of the 
immense importance of sea power. Its strategy was sound. 

The War of American Independence 

The peace of 1763 was so humiliating that every patriotic 
Frenchman longed for the opportunity of revenge. This of- 
fered itself in the revolt of the American colonies against 
the North Ministry in 1775. From the outset French neu- 
trality as regards the American rebels was most benevolent; 
nothing could be more pleasing to France than to see her 
old enemy involved in difficulties with the richest and most 
populous of her colonies. For the first two or three years 
France gave aid surreptitiously, but after the capture of Bur- 
goyne in 1777, she decided to enter the war openly and draw 
in allies as well. She succeeded in enlisting Spain in 1779 
and Holland the year following. The entrance of the latter 
was of small military value, perhaps, but at all events France 
so manipulated the rebellion in the colonies as to bring on 
another great European war. In this conflict for the first 
time she had no enemies to fight on the Continent; hence she 
was free to throw her full force upon the sea, attacking Brit- 
ish possessions in every quarter of the world. The War of 
the American Revolution became therefore a maritime war, 
the first since the conflicts with the Dutch in the 17th century. 

While Paul Jones was in Paris waiting for his promised 
command, he forwarded to the Minister of Marine a plan 
for a rapid descent in force on the American coast. If his 
plan had been followed and properly executed the war might 
have been ended in America at one blow. But this project 
died in the procrastination and red tape of the Ministry of 
Marine, and a subsequent proposal for an attack on Liverpool 



RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER 201 

dwindled into the mere commerce-destroying cruise which is 
memorable only for Jones's unparalleled fight with the 
Serapis. Eventually the navy of France was thrown into 
the balance to offset that of Great Britain, and it is largely 
to this fact that the United States owes its independence; 
men and munitions came freely from overseas and on one 
momentous occasion, the Battle of the Virginia Capes, the 
French navy performed its part decisively in action. But on 
a score of other occasions it failed pitiably on account of the 
lack of a comprehensive strategic plan and the want of energy 
and experience on the part of the commanding officers. 

It is true that the French navy had made progress since 
the Seven Years' War. In 1778, it possessed 80 good line of 
battle ships. To this force, a year later, Spain was able to 
contribute nearly sixty. But England began the war with 
150. Thus even if the French and Spanish personnel had 
been as well trained and as energetic as the British they would 
have had a superior force to contend with, particularly as the 
allied fleet was divided between the ports of Spain and France, 
and under dual command. But in efficiency the French and 
Spanish navies were vastly inferior to the British. Spanish 
efficiency may be dismissed at the outset as worthless. For 
the French officer the chief requisite was nobility of birth. 
The aristocracy of England furnished the officers for its 
service also, but in the French navy, considerations of social 
grade outweighed those of naval rank, a condition that never 
obtained in the British. In consequence, discipline — the prin- 
ciple of subordination animated by the spirit of team work — 
was conspicuously wanting in the French fleets. Individual 
captains were more concerned about their own prerogatives 
than about the success of the whole. This condition is illus- 
trated by the conduct of the captains under SufTren in the 
Bay of Bengal, where the genius of the commander was 
always frustrated by the wilfulness of his subordinates. 
Finally in the matter of tactics the French were brought up 
on a fatally wrong theory, that of acting on the defensive, 
of avoiding decisive action, of saving a fleet rather than risk- 
ing it for the sake of victory. Hence, though they were 



202 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

skilled in maneuvering, and ahead of the British in signaling, 
though their ships were as fine as any in the world, this fatal 
error of principle prevented their taking advantage of great 
opportunities and sent them to certain defeat in the end. 

Thus it is clear that the sea power of France and Spain 
was not formidable if the English had taken the proper course 
of strategy. This should have been to bottle up French and 
Spanish fleets in their own ports from Brest to Cadiz. Such 
a policy would have left enough ships to attend to the neces- ; 
sities of the army in America and the pursuit of French and 
American privateers, and accomplished the primary duty of 
preventing the arrival of French squadrons and French troops 
on the scene of war. Here the British government made its 
fatal mistake. Instead of concentrating on the coast of 
France and Spain, it tried to defend every outlying post where 
the flag might be threatened. Thus the superior English 
fleet was scattered all over the world, from Calcutta to 
Jamaica, while the French fleets came and went at will, send- 
ing troops and supplies to America and challenging the Brit- 
ish control of the sea. Had the French navy been more effi- 
cient and energetic in its leadership France might have made 
her ancient enemy pay far more dearly for her strategic 
blunder. As it was, England lost her colonies in America. 

Instead of the swift stroke on the American coast which 
Paul Jones had contemplated, a French fleet under d'Estaing 
arrived in the Delaware about five months after France had 
entered the war and after inexcusable delays on the way. In 
spite of the loss of precious time he had an opportunity to 
beat an inferior force under Howe at New York and seize 
that important British base, but his characteristic timidity 
kept him from doing anything there. From the American 
coast he went to the West Indies, where he bungled every 
opportunity of doing his duty. Fie allowed St. Lucia to fall 
into British hands and failed to capture Grenada. Turning 
north again, he made a futile attempt to retake Savannah, 
which had fallen to the English. Then at the end of 1779, at 
about the darkest hour of the American cause, he returned to 
France, leaving the colonists in the lurch. D'Estaing was by 



RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER 203 

training an infantry officer, and his appointment to such an 
important naval command is eloquent of the effect of court 
influence in demoralizing the navy. "S'il avait ete aussi 
marin que brave," was the generous remark of Suffren on 
this man. It is true that on shore, where he was at home, 
d'Estaing was personally fearless, but as commander of a 
fleet, where he was conscious of inexperience, he showed 
timidity that should have brought him to court martial. 

In March, 1780, the French fleet in the West Indies was 
put under the command of de Guichen, a far abler man than 
d'Estaing, but similarly indoctrinated with the policy of stay- 
ing on the defensive. His rival on the station was Rodney, 
a British officer of the old school, weakened by years and 
illness, but destined to make a name for himself by his great 
victory two years later. In many respects Rodney was a 
conservative, and in respect to an appetite for prize money 
he belonged to the 16th century, but his example went a long 
way to cure the British navy of the paralysis of the Fighting 
Instructions and bring back the close, decisive fighting methods 
of Blake and de Ruyter. 

In this same year in which Rodney took command of the 
West Indies station, a Scotch gentleman named Clerk pub- 
lished a pamphlet on naval tactics which attracted much atten- 
tion. It is a striking commentary on the lack of interest in 
the theory of the profession that no British naval officer had 
ever written on the subject. This civilian, who had no mili- 
tary training or experience, worked out an analysis of the 
Fighting Instructions and came to the conclusion that the 
whole conception of naval tactics therein contained was 
wrong, that decisive actions could be fought only by concen- 
trating superior forces on inferior. One can imagine the 
derision heaped on the landlubber who presumed to teach 
admirals their business, but there was no dodging the force 
of his point. Of course the mathematical precision of his 
paper victories depended on the enemy's being passive while 
the attack was carried out, but fundamentally he was right. 
The history of the past hundred years showed the futility of 
an unbroken line ahead, with van, center, and rear attempting 



204 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

to engage the corresponding divisions of the enemy. Decisive 
victories could be won only by close, concentrated fighting. 
It may be true, as the British naval officers asserted, that they 
were not influenced by Clerk's ideas, but the year in which 
his book appeared marks the beginning of the practice of his 
theory in naval warfare. 

At the time of the American Revolution the West Indies 
represented a debatable ground where British interests clashed 
with those of her enemies, France, Spain, and Holland. It 
was very rich in trade importance ; in fact, about one fourth 
of all British commerce was concerned with the Caribbean. 
Moreover, it contained the rival bases for operations on the 
American coast. Hence it became the chief theater of naval 
activity. Rodney's business was to make the area definitely 
British in control, to protect British possessions and trade 
and to capture as much as possible of enemy possessions and 
trade. On arriving at his station in the spring of 1780, he 
sought de Guichen. The latter had shown small enterprise, 
having missed one opportunity to capture British transports 
and another to prevent the junction of Rodney's fleet with 
that of Parker who was awaiting him. Even when the junc- 
tion was effected, the British total amounted to only 20 ships 
of the line to de Guichen's 22, and the French admiral might 
still have offered battle. Instead he followed the French 
strategy of his day, by lying at anchor at Fort Royal, Mar- 
tinique, waiting for the British to sail away and give him an 
opportunity to capture an island without having to fight for it. 

Rodney promptly sought him out and set a watch of frigates 
off the port. When de Guichen came out on April 15 (1780) 
to attend to the convoying of troops, Rodney was immediately 
in pursuit, and on the 17th the two fleets were in contact. 
Early that morning the British admiral signaled his plan "to 
attack the enemy's rear," because de Guichen's ships were 
strung out in extended order with a wide gap between rear 
and center. De Guichen, seeing his danger, wore together 
and closed the gap. This done, he again turned northward 
and the two fleets sailed on parallel courses but out of gun- 
shot. 



RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER 205 




206 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

About eleven o'clock, some four hours after his first signal, 
Rodney again signaled his intention to engage the enemy, and 
shortly before twelve he sent up the order, "for every ship 
to bear down and steer for her opposite in the enemy's line, 
agreeable to the 21st article of the Additional Fighting In- 
structions." Rodney had intended to concentrate his ships 
against their actual opposites at the time, — the rear of the 
French line, which was still considerably drawn out; but the 
captain of the leading ship interpreted the order to mean the 
numerical opposites in the enemy's line, after the style of 
fighting provided for by the Instructions from time imme- 
morial. Rodney's first signal informing the fleet that he 
intended to attack the enemy's rear meant nothing to his cap- 
tain at this time. Accordingly he sailed away to engage the 
first ship in the French van, followed by the vessels imme- 
diately astern of him, and thus wrecked the plan of his com- 
mander in chief. 

Nothing could illustrate better the hold of the traditional 
style of fighting on the minds of naval officers than this 
blunder, though it is only fair to add that there was some 
excuse in the ambiguity of the order. Rodney was infuriated 
and expressed himself with corresponding bitterness. He 
always regarded this battle as the one on which his fame 
should rest because of what it might have been if his subor- 
dinates had given him proper support. The interesting point 
lies in the fact that he designed to throw his whole force on 
an inferior part of the enemy's force — the principle of con- 
centration. In a later and much more famous battle, as we 
shall see, Rodney departed still further from the traditional 
tactics by "breaking the line," his own as well as that of the 
French, and won a great victory. 

Meanwhile there occurred another operation not so cred- 
itable. Rodney had spent a large part of his life dodging 
creditors, and it was due to the generous loan of a French 
gentleman in Paris that he did not drag out the years of this 
war in the Bastille for debt. When Holland entered the war he 
saw an opportunity to make a fortune by seizing the island of 
St. Eustatius, which had been the chief depot in the West 



RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER 207 

Indies for smuggling contraband into America. To this pur- 
pose he subordinated every other consideration. The island 
was an easy prize, but the quarrels and lawsuits over the dis- 
tribution of the booty broke him down and sent him back 
to England at just the time when he was most needed in 
American waters, leaving Hood in acting command. 

In March, 1781, de Grasse sailed from Brest with a fleet 
of 26 ships of the line and a large convoy. Five of his bat- 
tleships were detached for service in the East, under Suffren, 
of whom we shall hear more later. The rest proceeded to 
the Caribbean. On arriving at Martinique de Grasse had 
an excellent opportunity to beat Hood, who had an inferior 
force; but like his predecessors, d'Estaing and de Guichen, he 
was content to follow a defensive policy, excusing himself 
on the ground of not exposing his convoy. While at Cape 
Haitien he received messages from Rochambeau and Wash- 
ington urging his cooperation with the campaign in America. 
To his credit be it said that on this occasion he acted promptly 
and skillfully, and the results were of great moment. 

At this time the British had subdued Georgia and South 
Carolina, and Cornwallis was attempting to carry the conquest 
through North Carolina. In order to keep in touch with his 
source of supplies the sea, however, he was compelled to 
fall back to Wilmington. From there, under orders from 
General Clinton, he marched north to Yorktown, Virginia, 
where he was joined by a small force of infantry. Wash- 
ington and Rochembeau had agreed on the necessity of getting 
the cooperation of the West Indies fleet in an offensive di- 
rected either at Clinton in New York or at Cornwallis at 
Yorktown. Rochambeau preferred the latter alternative, be- 
cause it involved fewer difficulties, and the message to de 
Grasse was accompanied by a private memorandum from 
him to the effect that he preferred the Chesapeake as the 
scene of operations. Accordingly de Grasse sent the mes- 
senger frigate back with word of his intention to go to Chesa- 
peake Bay. He then made skillful arrangements for the 
transport of all available troops, and set sail with every ship 



208 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



he could muster, steering by the less frequented Old Bahama 
Channel in order to screen his movement. 

On August 30 (1781) de Grasse anchored in Lynnhaven 
Bay, just inside the Chesapeake Capes, with 28 ships of the 
line. The two British guard frigates were found stupidly at 
anchor inside the bay; one was taken and the other chased 
up the York river. De Grasse then landed the troops he had 




SCENE OF THE YORKTOWN CAMPAIGN 



brought with him, and these made a welcome reenforcement 
to Lafayette, who was then opposing Cornwallis. At the 
same time Washington was marching south to join Lafayette, 
and word had been sent to the commander of a small French 
squadron at Newport to make junction with de Grasse, bring- 
ing the siege artillery necessary to the operations before 
Yorktown. Thus the available forces were converging on 
Cornwallis in superior strength, and his only route for sup- 
plies and reinforcements lay by sea. All depended on whether 



RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER 209 

the British could succeed in forcing the entrance to 1 Chesapeake 
Bay. 

Hood, with 14 ships of the line, had followed on the trail 
of de Grasse, and as it happened looked into Chesapeake Bay 
just three days before the French admiral arrived. Finding 
no sign of the French? Hood sailed on to New York and 
joined Admiral Graves, who being senior, took command of 
the combined squadrons. As it was an open secret at that 
time that the allied operations would be directed at»Cornwallis, 
Graves immediately sailed for the Capes, hoping on the way 
to intercept the Newport squadron which was known to be 
bound for the same destination. On reaching the Capes, 
September 5, he found de Grasse guarding the entrance to 
the bay with 24 ships of the line, the remaining four having 
been detailed to block the mouths of the James and York 
rivers. To oppose this force Graves had only 19 ships of 
the line, but he did not hesitate to offer battle. 

In de Grasse's mind there were two things to accomplish : 
first, to hold the bay, and secondly, to keep the British occu- 
pied far enough at sea to allow the Newport squadron to 
slip in. Of course he could have made sure of both objects 
and a great deal more by defeating the British fleet in a 
decisive action, but that was not the French naval doctrine. 
The entrance to the Chesapeake is ten miles wide but the 
main channel lies between the southern promontory and a 
shoal called the Middle Ground three miles north of it. The 
British stood for the channel during the morning and the 
French, taking advantage of the ebbing tide at noon, cleared 
the bay, forming line of battle as they went. As they had to 
make several tacks to clear Cape Henry, the ships issued in 
straggling order, offering an opportunity for attack which 
Graves did not appreciate. Instead he went about, heading 
east on a course parallel to that of de Grasse, and holding 
the windward position. When the two lines were nearly 
opposite each other the British admiral wore down to attack. 

Graves's method followed the orthodox tradition exactly, 
and with the unvarying result. As the attacking fleet bore 
down in line ahead at an angle, the van of course came into 



210 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



action first, unsupported for some time by the rest. As the 
signal for close action was repeated, this angle was made 
sharper, and in attempting to close up the line several ships 
got bunched in such a way as to mask their fire. Meanwhile 
the rear, the seven ships under Hood, still trailing along in 
line ahead, never got into the action at all. Graves had sig- 
naled for "close action," but Hood chose to believe that the 



££•5, M I d d I «■ " G I'd \jn d 



^**'«fl G RAVES 



OeORASSE • 
• C* 3»c3 »c> oo & oc? o£> oo> o 




Cape Henry 



Wind N.IM.E 




BATTLE OF THE VIRGINIA CAPES, SEPT. 5, 1781 

(After diagram in Mahan's Major Operations in the War of American Independence, 

p. 180.) 

order for line ahead still held until the signal was repeated, 
whereupon he bore down. As the French turned away at the 
same time, to keep their distance, Hood contributed nothing 
to the fighting of the day. At sunset the battle ended. The 
British had lost 90 killed and 246 wounded; the French, a 
total of 200. Several of the British ships were badly dam- 
aged, one of which was in a sinking condition and had to 
be burned. The two fleets continued on an easterly course 
about three miles apart, and for five days more the two 
maneuvered without fighting. Graves was too much injured 



RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER 211 

by the first day's encounter to attack again and de Grasse was 
content to let him alone. Graves still had an opportunity to 
cut back and enter the bay, taking a position from which it 
would have been hard to dislodge him and effecting the main 
object oi the expedition by holding the mouth of the Chesa- 
peake. But this apparently did not occur to him. De Grasse, 
who had imperiled Washington's campaign by cruising so far 
from the entrance, finally returned on the nth, and found 
that the Newport squadron had arrived safely the day before. 
When Graves saw that the French fleet was now increased 
to 36 line-of -battle ships, he gave up hope of winning the 
bay and returned to New York, leaving Cornwallis to his 
fate. A little over a month later, October 19, the latter sur- 
rendered, and with his sword passed the last hope of sub- 
duing the American revolution. 

This battle of the Capes, or Lynnhaven, has never until 
recent times been given its true historical perspective, largely 
because in itself it was a rather tame affair. But as the his- 
torian Reich x observes, "battles, like men, are important not 
for their dramatic splendor but for their efficiency and conse- 
quences. . . . The battle off Cape Henry had ultimate effects 
infinitely more important than Waterloo." Certainly there 
never was a more striking example of the "influence of sea 
power" on a campaign. Just at the crisis of the American 
Revolution the French navy, by denying to the British their 
communications by sea, struck the decisive blow of the war. 
This was the French revanche for the humiliation of 1763. 

The British failure in this action was due to a dull com- 
mander in chief carrying out a blundering attack based on 
the Fighting Instructions. Blame must fall also on his second 
in command, Hood, who, though a brilliant officer, certainly 
failed to support his chief properly when there was an obvious 
thing to do. Perhaps if the personal relations between the 
two had been more cordial Hood would have taken the initia- 
tive. But in these days the initiative of a subordinate was 
not encouraged, and Hood chose to stand on his dignity. 

Although the war was practically settled by the fall of 
1 Foundations of Modern Europe, p. 24. 



212 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

Yorktown, it required another year or so to die out. In this 
final year a famous naval battle was fought which went far 
toward establishing British predominance in the West Indies, 
and which revealed something radically different in naval 
tactics from the practice of the time. 

In the spring of 1782, Rodney was back in command of the 
West Indian station, succeeding Hood, who continued to serve 
as commander of a division. The British base was Gros 
Islet Bay in Santa Lucia. De Grasse was at Fort Royal, 
Martinique, waiting to transport troops to Santo Domingo, 
where other troops and ships were collected. There, joining 
with a force of Spaniards from Cuba, he was to conduct a 
campaign against Jamaica. It was Rodney's business to 
break up this plan. During a period of preparation on both 
sides, reinforcements joined the rival fleets, that of the British 
amounting to enough to give Rodney a marked superiority in 
numbers. Moreover his ships were heavier, as he had five 
3-deckers to the French one, and about 200 more guns. The 
superiority of speed, as well, lay with Rodney because more 
of his ships had copper sheathing. A still further advantage 
lay in the fact that he was not burdened with the problem of 
protecting convoys and transports as was de Grasse. Thus, 
in the event of conflict, the advantages lay heavily with the 
British. 

On the morning of April 8, the English sentry frigate off 
Fort Royal noted that the French were coming out, and 
hastened with the news to Rodney at Santa Lucia. The latter 
put to sea at once. He judged rightly that de Grasse would 
steer for Santo Domingo, in order to get rid of his trans- 
ports at their destination as soon as possible, and on the 
morning of the 9th the French were sighted off the west 
coast of the island of Dominica. On the approach of the 
English fleet, de Grasse signaled his transports to run to the 
northwest, while he took his fleet on a course for the channel 
between the islands of Dominica and Guadeloupe. As the 
British would be sure to pursue the fleet, this move would 
enable the convoy to escape. 

The channel toward which de Grasse turned his fleet is 



RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER 213 

known as the Saints' Passage from a little group of islands, 
"les isles des Saintes," lying to the north of it. In the course 
of the pursuit, Hood, with the British van division of nine 
ships, had got ahead of the rest and offered a tempting open- 
ing for attack in superior force. If de Grasse had grasped 
his opportunity he might have inflicted a crushing blow on 
Rodney and upset the balance of superiority. But the lack 
of aggressiveness in the French doctrine was again fatal to 
French success. De Grasse merely sent his second in com- 
mand to conduct a skirmish at long range — and thus threw 
his chance away. 

The light winds and baffling calms kept both fleets idle for 
a day. On the 1 1 th de Grasse tried to work his fleet through 
the channel on short tacks. Just as he had almost accom- 
plished his purpose he discovered several of his vessels still 
so far to westward as to be in danger of capture. In order 
to rescue these he gave up the fruits of laborious beating 
against the head wind and returned. The following morn- 
ing, April 12 (1782), discovered the two fleets to the west 
of the strait and so near that the French could no longer evade 
battle. The French came down on the port tack and the 
British stood toward them, with their admiral's signal flying 
to "engage to leeward." When the two lines converged to 
close range, the leading British ship shifted her course slightly 
so as to run parallel with that of the French, and the two fleets 
sailed past each other firing broadsides. So far the battle 
had followed traditional line-ahead pattern. 

Just as the leading ship of the British came abreast of the 
rearmost of the French, the wind suddenly veered to the 
southward, checking the speed of the French ships and swing- 
ing their bows over toward the English line. At best a line 
of battle in the sailing ship days was an uneven straggling 
formation, and the effect of this flaw of wind, dead ahead, 
was to break up the French line into irregular groups sep- 
arated by wide gaps. One of these opened up ahead as 
Rodney's flagship, the Formidable, forged past the French 
line. His fleet captain, Douglas, saw the opportunity and 
pleaded with Rodney to cut through the gap. "No," he re- 



214 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



plied, "I will not break my line." Douglas insisted. A mo- 
ment later, as the Formidable came abreast of the opening, 
the opportunity proved too tempting and Rodney gave his 
consent. His battle signal, "engage the enemy to leeward," 
was still flying, but the Formidable luffed up and swung 



T 

























BRITISH . 
FRENCH 



-Wk 






ID 
^«2 



FORMIDABLE 
(Rodney) 






if 



Wind S.S.E. 



Phase one Phase Two 

BATTLE OF THE SAINTS' PASSAGE, APRIL 12, 1782 
After diagram in Mahan's Influence of Sea Power Upon History, p. 486. ■ 

through the French line followed by five others. The ship 
immediately ahead of the Formidable also cut through a gap, 
and the sixth astern of the flagship went through as well, fol- 
lowed by the entire British rear. As each vessel pierced the 
broken line she delivered a terrible fire with both broadsides 
at close range. 

The result of this maneuver was that the British fleet found 






RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER 215 

itself to windward of the French in three groups, while the 
French ships were scattered to leeward and trying to escape 
before the wind, leaving three dismasted hulks between the 
lines. An isolated group of six ships in the center, including 
de Grasse's Ville de Paris, offered a target for attack, but the 
wind was light and Rodney indolent in pursuit. Of these, 
one small vessel was overhauled and the French flagship was 
taken after a heroic defense, that lasted until sunset, against 
overwhelming odds. De Grasse's efforts to reform his fleet 
after his line was broken had met with failure, for the van 
fled to the southwest and the rear to the northwest, apparently 
making little effort to succor their commander in chief or 
retrieve the fortunes of the day. 

Rodney received a peerage for this day's work but he cer- 
tainly did not make the most of his victory. Apparently con- 
tent with the five prizes he had taken, together with the per- 
son of de Grasse, he allowed the bulk of the French fleet to 
escape when he had it in his power to capture practically all. 
On this point his subordinate, Hood, expressed himself with 
great emphasis : 

"Why he (Rodney) should bring the fleet to because the 
Ville de Paris was taken, I cannot reconcile. He did not pur- 
sue under easy sail, so as never to have lost sight of the enemy, 
in the night, which would clearly and most undoubtedly have 
enabled him to have taken almost every ship the next day. . . . 
Had I had the honor of commanding his Majesty's noble fleet 
on the 1 2th, I may, without much imputation of vanity, say 
the flag of England should now have graced the sterns of up- 
wards of twenty sail of the enemy's ships of the line." 1 

Sir Charles Douglas, who had been responsible for Rod- 
ney's breaking the line, warmly agreed with Hood's opinion 
on this point. Nevertheless, although the victory was not 
half of what it might have been in younger hands, it proved 
decisive enough to shatter the naval organization of the 
French in the West Indies. It stopped the projected cam- 

1 Quoted by Mahan, The Royal Navy (Clowes), Vol. Ill, p. 535. 



216 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

paign against Jamaica and served to write better terms for 
England in the peace treaty of January 20, 1783. 

Tactically this battle has become famous for the maneuver 
of "breaking the line," contrary to the express stipulations of 
the Fighting Instructions. Certainly the move was not pre- 
meditated. Rodney may well be said to have been 
pushed into making it, and two of his captains made the same 
move on their own initiative. Indeed it is quite likely that, 
after the event, too much has been made of this as a piece 
of deliberate tactics, for the sudden shift of wfnd had paid 
off the bows of the French ships so that they were probably 
heading athwart the course of the British line, and the British 
move was obviously the only thing to do. But the lesson of 
the battle was clear, — the decisive effect of close fighting and 
concentrated fire. In the words of Hannay, "It marked the 
beginning of that fierce and headlong yet well calculated style 
of sea fighting which led to Trafalgar and made England un- 
disputed mistress of the sea." * It marked, therefore, the end 
of the Fighting Instructions, which had deadened the spirit 
as well as the tactics of the British navy for over a hundred 
years 

Th 
by Mahan in the following passage : 



The tactical value of "breaking the line" is well summarized 



"The effect of breaking an enemy's line, or order-of-battle, 
depends upon several conditions. The essential idea is to di- 
vide the opposing force by penetrating through an interval 
found, or made, in it, and then to concentrate upon that one 
of the fractions which can be least easily helped by the other. 
In a column of ships this will usually be the rear. The com- 
pactness of the order attacked, the number of the ships cut 
off, the length of time during which they can be isolated and 
outnumbered, will all affect the results. A very great factor 
in the issue will be the moral effect, the confusion introduced 
into a line thus broken. Ships coming up toward the break 
are stopped, the rear doubles up, while the ships ahead con- 
tinue their course. Such a moment is critical, and calls for 
instant action; but the men are rare who in an unforeseen 

1 Rodney (English Men of Action Series), p. 213. 



RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER 217 

emergency can see, and at once take the right course, especially 
if, being subordinates, they incur responsibility. In such a 
scene of confusion the English, without presumption, hoped 
to profit by their better seamanship; for it is not only 'cour- 
age and devotion,' but skill, which then tells. All these ef- 
fects of 'breaking the line' received illustration in Rodney's 
great battle in 1782." 1 

Before we leave the War of American Independence mention 
should be made of Commodore Suffren who, as we have seen, 
left de Grasse with five ships of the line to' conduct a campaign 
in the Indian Ocean in the spring of 1781. His purpose was 
to shake the British hold on India, which had been fastened by 
the genius of Clive in the Seven Years' War. But the task 
given to Suffren was exceedingly difficult. His squadron was 
inadequate — for instance, he had only two frigates for scout 
and messenger duty — and he had no port that he could use as 
a base in Indian waters. To conduct any campaign at all he 
was compelled to live off his enemy and capture a base. These 
were risky prospects for naval operations several thousand 
miles from home, and for the faintest hope of success re- 
quired an energy and initiative which had never before ap- 
peared in a French naval commander. In addition to these 
handicaps of circumstance Suffren soon discovered that he had 
to deal with incorrigible slackness and insubordination in his 
captains. 

In spite of everything, however, Suffren achieved an amaz- 
ing degree of success. He succeeded in living off the prizes 
taken from the British, and he took from them the port of 
Trincomalee for a base. He fought five battles off the coast 
of India against the British Vice Admiral Hughes, in only one 
of which was the latter the assailant, and in all of which Suf- 
fren bore off the honors. He was constantly hampered, how- 
ever, by the inefficiency and insubordination of his captains. 
On four or five occasions, including an engagement at the 
Cape Verde Islands on his way to India, it was only this mis- 
conduct that saved the British from the crushing attack that 

'The Influence of Sea Power upon History, pp. 380-381. 



218 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

Stiff ren had planned. Unfortunately for him his victories 
were barren of result, for the terms of peace gave nothing in 
India to the French which they had not possessed before. As 
Trincomalee had belonged to the Dutch before the British 
captured it, this port was turned back to Holland. 

Nevertheless Suffren deserves to be remembered both for 
what he actually accomplished under grave difficulties and 
what he might have done had he been served by loyal and 
efficient subordinates. Among all the commanders of this 
war he stands preeminent for naval genius, and this eminence 
is all the more extraordinary when one realizes that his re- 
sourcefulness, tenacity, aggressiveness, his contempt of the 
formal, parade tactics of his day, were notoriously absent in 
the rest of the French service. Such was the admiration felt 
for him by his adversaries that after the end of the war, 
when the French squadron arrived at Cape Town on its way 
home and found the British squadron anchored there, all the 
British officers, from Hughes down, went aboard the French 
flagship to tender their homage. 1 

Although the War of American Independence was unsuc- 
cessfully fought by Great Britain and she was compelled to 
recognize the independence of her rebellious colonies, she lost 
comparatively little else by the terms of peace. As we have 
seen, her hold in India was unchanged. The stubborn defense 
of Gibraltar throughout the war, aided by occasional timely 
relief by a British fleet, saved that stronghold for the English 
flag. To Spain England was forced to surrender Florida and 
Minorca. France got back all the West Indian islands she 
had lost, with the exception of Tobago, but gained nothing 
besides. The war therefore did not restore to France her 
colonial empire of former days or make any change in the 
relative overseas strength of the two nations. Despite the 

*"If ever a man lived who justified Napoleon's maxim that war is an 
affair not of men but of a man, it was he. It was by his personal merit 
that his squadron came to the very verge of winning a triumphant suc- 
cess. That he failed was due to the fact that the French Navy . . . was 
honeycombed by the intellectual and moral vices which were bringing 
France to the great Revolution — corruption, self-seeking, acrid class in- 
solence, and skinless, morbid vanity." — The Royal Navy, David Hannay, 
II, 287. 



RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER 219 

blunders of the war no rival sea power challenged that of 
Great Britain at the conclusion of peace. 

Meanwhile, just before the war and during its early years, 
an English naval officer was laying the foundation for an 
enormous expansion of the British empire in the east. This 
was James Cook, a man who owed his commission in the navy 
and his subsequent fame to nothing in family or political in- 
fluence, but to sheer genius. Of humble birth, he passed from 
the merchant service into the navy and rose by his extraordi- 
nary abilities to the rank of master. Later he was commis- 
sioned lieutenant and finally attained the rank of post captain. 1 
Such rank was hardly adequate recognition of his great 
powers, but it was unusually high for a man who was not born 
a "gentleman." 

At the end of the Seven Years' War he distinguished him- 
self, by his work in surveying and sounding on the coasts of 
Labrador and Newfoundland, as a man of science. In con- 
sequence, he was detailed to undertake expeditions for observ- 
ing the transit of Venus and for discovering the southern 
continent which was supposed to exist in the neighborhood of 
the Antarctic circle. In the course of this work Cook practi- 
cally established the geography of the southern half of the 
globe as we know it to-day. And by his skill and study of the 
subject he conquered the great enemy of exploring expedi- 
tions, scurvy. Thirty years before, another British naval offi- 
cer, Anson, had taken a squadron into the Pacific and lost 
about three-fourths of his men from this disease. When the 
war of the American Revolution broke out, Cook was abroad 
on one of his expeditions, but the French and American gov- 
ernments issued orders to their captains not to molest him on 
account of his great service to the cause of scientific knowl- 
edge. Unfortunately he was killed by savages at the Sand- 
wich Islands in 1779. 

The bearing of his work on the British empire lies chiefly 
in his careful survey of the east coast of Australia, which he 
laid claim to in the name of King George, and the circumnavi- 

1 Full captain's rank, held only by a captain in command of a vessel 
of at least 20 guns. 



220 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

gation of New Zealand, which later gave title to the British 
claim on those islands. Thus, while the American colonies in 
the west were winning their independence, another territory 
in the east, far more extensive, was being brought under British 
sway, destined in another century to become important domin- 
ions of the empire. The Dutch had a claim of priority in dis- 
covery through the early voyages of Tasman, but they at- 
tempted no colonization and Dutch sea power was too weak to 
make good a technical claim in the face of England's navy. 

Finally, when the results of a century of wars between 
France and England are summarized, we find that France had 
lost all her great domain in America except a few small islands 
in the West Indies. In brief, it is due to British control of the 
sea during the 18th century that practically all of the continent 
north of the Rio Grande is English in speech, laws, and tra- 
dition. 

This control of the sea exercised by England was not the gift 
of fortune. It was a prize gained, in the main, by wise policy 
in peace and hard fighting in war. France had the opportunity 
to wrest from England the control of the sea as England had 
won it from Holland, for France at the close of the 17th cen- 
tury dominated Europe. In population and in wealth she was 
superior to her rival. But the arrogance of her king kept her 
embroiled in futile wars on the Continent, with little energy left 
for the major issue, the conquest of the sea. Finally, when the 
war of American Independence left her a free hand to con- 
centrate on her navy as against that of England, France lost 
through the fatal weakness of policy which corrupted all her 
officers with the single brilliant exception of Suffren. The 
French naval officer avoided battle on principle, and when he 
could not avoid it he accepted the defensive. To the credit of 
the English officer be it said that, as a rule, he sought the 
enemy and took the aggressive; he had the "fighting spirit." 
This difference between French and British commanders had 
as much to do with the ultimate triumph of England on the 
sea as anything else. It retrieved many a blunder in strategy 
and tactics by sheer hard hitting. 

The history of the French navy points a moral applicable 



RISE OF ENGLISH SEA POWER 221 

to any service and any time. When a navy encourages the idea 
that ships must not be risked, that a decisive battle must be 
avoided because of what might happen in case of defeat, it 
is headed for the same fate that overwhelmed the French. 

REFERENCES 

Influence of Sea Power upon History, A. T. Mahan, 1890. 

A Short History of the Royal Navy, David Hannay, 1909. 

The Royal Navy (vols. II, III), W. L. Clowes et al., 1903. 

Admiral Blake, English Men of Action Series, David Hannay, 1909. 

Rodney, English Men of Action Series, David Hannay, 1891. 

Monk, English Men of Action Series, Julian Corbett, 1907. 

England in the Seven Years' War, J. S. Corbett, 1907. 

The Graves Papers, F. E. Chadwick, 1916. 

Studies in Naval History, Biographies, J. K. Laughton, 1887. 

From Howard to Nelson, ed. by J. K. Laughton, 1899. 

Major Operations in the War of American Independence, A. T. 

Mahan, 1913. 
Sea Kings of Britain, Geoffrey Callender, 1915. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE NAPOLEONIC WARS : THE FIRST OF JUNE 
AND CAMPERDOWN 

Ten" years after the War of American Independence, Brit- 
ish sea power was drawn into a more prolonged and desperate 
conflict with France. This time it was with a France whose 
navy, demoralized by revolution, was less able to dispute sea 
control, but whose armies, organized into an aggressive, em- 
pire-building force by the genius of Napoleon, threatened to 
dominate Europe, shaking the old monarchies with dangerous 
radical doctrines, and bringing all Continental nations into the 
conflict either as enemies or as allies. The dismissal of the 
French envoy from England immediately after the execution 
of Louis XVI (Jan. 21, 1793) led the French Republic a 
week later to a declaration of war, which continued with but 
a single intermission — from October, 1801, to May, 1803 — 
through the next 22 years. 

The magnitude of events on land in this period, during 
which French armies fought a hundred bloody campaigns, 
overthrew kingdoms, and remade the map of Europe, obscures 
the importance of the warfare on the sea. Yet it was Great 
Britain by virtue of her navy and insular position that re- 
mained Napoleon's least vulnerable and most obstinate oppo- 
nent, forcing him to ever renewed and exhausting campaigns, 
reviving continental opposition, and supporting it with sub- 
sidies made possible by control of sea trade. In Napoleon's 
own words the effect of this pressure is well summarized : "To 
live without ships, without trade, without colonies, is to live 
as no Frenchman can consent to do." The Egyptian cam- 
paign, conceived as a thrust at British sources of wealth in 
the East, and defeated at the Nile; the organization of the 

222 



FIRST OF JUNE AND CAMPERDOWN 223 

northern neutrals against England, overthrown at Copen- 
hagen; the direct invasion of the British Isles, repeatedly 
planned and thwarted at St. Vincent, Camperdown, and Tra- 
falgar; the final and most nearly successful effort to ruin Eng- 
land by closing her continental markets and thus, in Napoleon's 
phrase, "defeating the sea by the land" — these were the suc- 
cessive measures by which he sought to shake the grip of sea 
power. 

The following narrative of these events is in three divisions : 
the first dealing with the earlier engagements of the First of 
June and Camperdown, fought by squadrons based on home 
ports ; the second with the war in the Mediterranean and 
the rise of Nelson as seen in the campaigns of St. Vincent, 
the Nile, and Copenhagen; the third with the Trafalgar 
campaign and the commercial struggle to which the naval side 
of the war was later confined. The career of Nelson is given 
an emphasis justified by his primacy among naval leaders and 
the value of his example for later times. 

The effect of land events in obscuring the naval side of the 
war, already mentioned, is explained not merely by their 
magnitude, but by the fact that, though Great Britain was 
more than once brought to the verge of ruin, this was a con- 
sequence not of the enemy's power on the sea, but of his vic- 
tories on land. Furthermore, the slow process which ended 
in the downfall of Napoleon and the reduction of France to 
her old frontiers was accomplished, not so conspicuously by 
the economic pressure of sea power, as by the efforts of 
armies on battlefields from Russia to Spain. On the sea 
British supremacy was more firmly established, and the capaci- 
ties of France and her allies was far less, than in preceding 
conflicts of the century. 

The French Navy Demoralized 

The explanation of this weakness of the French navy in- 
volves an interesting but somewhat perplexing study of the 
influences which make for naval growth or decay. That 
its ineffectiveness was due largely to an inferior national 



224 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

instinct or genius for sea warfare, as compared with England, 
is discredited by the fact that the disparity was less obvious 
in previous wars; for, as Lord Clowes has insisted, England 
won no decisive naval victory against superior forces from 
the second Dutch War to the time of Nelson. The familiar 
theory that democracy ruined the French navy will be ac- 
cepted nowadays only with some qualifications, especially when 
it is remembered that French troops equally affected by the 
downfall of caste rule were steadily defeating the armies of 
monarchical powers. It is true, however, that navies, as com- 
pared with armies, are more complicated and more easily dis- 
organized machines, and that it would have taxed even Na- 
polenic genius to rehabilitate the French navy after the neglect, 
mutiny, and wholesale sweeping out of trained personnel to 
which it was subjected in the first furies of revolution. What- 
ever the merits of the officers of the old regime, selected as 
they were wholly from the aristocracy and dominated by the 
defensive policy of the French service, three-fourths of them 
were driven out by 1791, and replaced by officers from the 
merchant service, from subordinate ratings, and from the 
crews. Suspicion of aristocracy was accompanied in the navy 
by a more fatal suspicion of skill. In January, 1794, the 
regiments of marine infantry and artillery, as well as the corps 
of seamen-gunners, were abolished on the ground that no body 
of men should have "the exclusive privilege of fighting the 
enemy at sea," and their places were filled by battalions of 
the national guard. Figures show that as a result, French 
gunnery was far less efficient than in the preceding war. 

The strong forces that restored discipline in the army had 
more difficulty in reaching the navy; and Napoleon's gift for 
discovering ability and lifting it to command was marked 
by its absence in his choice of leaders for the fleets. Usually 
he fell back on pessimistic veterans of the old regime like 
Brueys, Missiessy, and Villeneuve. An exception, Allemand, 
showed by his cruise out of Rochefort in 1805 what youth, 
energy, and daring could accomplish even with inferior means. 
Considering the importance of leadership as a factor in suc- 
cess, we may well believe that, had a French Nelson, or even 



FIRST OF JUNE AND CAMPERDOWN 225 

a Suffren, been discovered in this epoch, history would tell 
a different tale. If further reasons for the decadence of the 
navy are needed, they may be found in the extreme difficulty 
of securing naval stores and timber from the Baltic, and in the 
fact that, though France had nearly three times the population 
of the British Isles, her wealth, man-power, and genius were 
absorbed in the war on land. 

Aside from repulsion at the violence of the French revolu- 
tion and fear of its contagion, England had a concrete motive 
for war in the French occupation of the Austrian Netherlands 
and the Scheldt, the possession of which by an ambitious mari- 
time nation England has always regarded as a menace to her 
safety and commercial prosperity. "This government," de- 
clared the British Ministry in December, 1792, "will never 
view with indifference that France shall make herself, directly 
or indirectly, sovereign of the Low Countries or general ar- 
bitress of the rights and liberties of Europe." 

In prosecuting the war, Great Britain fought chiefly with 
her main weapon, the navy, leaving the land war to her allies. 
A contemporary critic remarked that she "worked with her 
navy and played with her army" ; though the latter did useful 
service in colonial conquests and in Egypt, the two expedi- 
tionary forces to the Low Countries in 1793 and 1799 were ill- 
managed and ineffective. The tasks of the fleet were to guard 
the British Isles from raids and invasion, to protect British 
commerce in all parts of the world, and, on the offensive, to 
seize enemy colonies, cut off enemy trade, and cooperate in 
the Mediterranean with allied armies. To accomplish these 
aims, which called for a wide dispersion of forces, the British 
naval superiority over France was barely adequate. Accord- 
ing to the contemporary naval historian James, the strength 
of the two fleets at the outbreak of war was as follows : 

Ships of the Aggregate 

line Guns broadsides 

British 115 8,718 88,957 

French 76 6,002 73j°57 



226 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

Of her main fighting units, the ships-of-the-line, England 
could put into commission about 85, which as soon as possible 
were distributed in three main spheres of operation: in the 
Mediterranean and its western approaches, from 20 to 25 ; in 
the West Indies, from 10 to 12; in home waters, from the 
North Sea to Cape Finisterre, from 20 to 25, with a reserve 
of some 25 more in the home bases on the Channel. Though 
this distribution was naturally altered from time to time to 
meet changes in the situation, it gives at least an idea of the 
general disposition of the British forces throughout the war. 
France, with no suitable bases in the Channel, divided her fleet 
between the two main arsenals at Brest and Toulon, with minor 
squadrons at Roche fort and, during the Spanish alliance, in the 
ports of Spain. 

Distant Operations 

In the West Indies and other distant waters, France could 
offer but little effective resistance, and operations there may 
hence be dismissed briefly, but with emphasis on the benefit 
which naval control conferred upon British trade, the main 
guaranty of England's financial stability and power to keep up 
the war. Fully one-fifth of this trade was with the West In- 
dies. Consequently, both to swell the volume of British com- 
merce and protect it from privateering, the seizure of the 
French West Indian colonies — "filching the sugar islands," as 
Sheridan called it — was a very justifiable war measure, in spite 
of the scattering of forces involved. Hayti was lost to France 
as a result of the negro uprising under Toussaint l'Ouverture. 
Practically all the French Antilles changed hands twice in 1794, 
the failure of the British to hold them arising from a com- 
bination of yellow fever, inadequate forces of occupation, and 
lax blockade methods on the French coast, which permitted 
heavy reinforcements to leave France. General Abercromby, 
with 17,000 men, finally took all but Guadaloupe in the next 
year. As Holland, Spain, and other nations came under 
French control, England seized their colonies likewise — the 
Dutch settlements at the Cape of Good Hope and Ceylon in 
1795 ; the Moluccas and other Dutch islands in the East Indies 



FIRST OF JUNE AND CAMPERDOWN 227 

in 1796; Trinidad (Spanish) in 1797; Curagao (Dutch) in 
1800; and the Swedish and Danish West Indies in 1801. By 
the Treaty of Amiens in 1802 all these except Trinidad and 
Ceylon were given back, and had to be retaken in the later 
period of the war, Guadaloupe remaining a privateers' nest 
until its final capture in 18 10. Though French trade was 
ruined, it was impossible to stamp out privateering, which 
grew with the growth of British commerce which it preyed 
upon, and the extent of which is indicated by the estimate that 
in 1807 there were from 200 to 300 privateers on the coasts of 
Cuba and Hayti alone. As for the captured islands, Great 
Britain in 18 15 retained only Malta, Heligoland, and the Ionian 
Islands in European waters; Cape Colony, Mauritius, and 
Ceylon on the route to the East ; and in the Caribbean, Dem- 
erara on the coast, Santa Lucia, Trinidad, and Tobago — some 
of them of little intrinsic value, but all useful outposts for 
an empire of the seas. 

In the Channel and Bay of Biscay, the first year of war 
passed quietly. Lord Howe, commanding the British Channel 
fleet, had behind him a long, fine record as a disciplinarian and 
tactician ; he had fought with Hawke at Quiberon Bay, pro- 
tected New York and Rhode Island against d'Estaing in 1778, 
and later thrown relief into Gibraltar in the face of superior 
force. Now 68 years of age, he inclined to cautious, old- 
school methods, such as indeed marked activities on both land 
and sea at this time, before Napoleon had injected a new des- 
perateness into war. Both before and after the "Glorious First 
of June" the watch on the French coast was merely nominal; 
small detachments were kept off Brest, but the main fleet rested 
in Portsmouth throughout the winter and took only occasional 
cruises during the remainder of the year. 

The Battle of the First of June 

Though there had been no real blockade, the interruption 
of her commerce, the closure of her land frontiers, and the 
bad harvest of 1793, combined to bring France in the spring 
following to the verge of famine, and forced her to risk her 



228 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

fleet in an effort to import supplies from overseas. On April 
ii an immense flotilla of 120 grain vessels sailed from the 
Chesapeake under the escort of two ships-of-the-line, which 
were to be strengthened by the entire Brest fleet at a ren- 
dezvous 300 miles west of Belleisle. Foodstuffs having al- 
ready been declared subject to seizure by both belligerents, 
Howe was out on May 2 to intercept the convoy. A big 
British merchant fleet also put to sea with him, to protect 
which he had to detach 8 of his 34 ships, but with orders to 
6 of these that they should rejoin his force on the 20th off 
Ushant. Looking into Brest on the 18th, Howe found the 
French battle fleet already at sea. Not waiting for the de- 
tachment, and thus losing its help in the battle that was to 
follow, he at once turned westward and began sweeping with 
his entire fleet the waters in which the convoy was expected to 
appear. 

The French with 26 ships-of-the-line — and thus precisely 
equal to Howe in numbers — had left Brest two days before. 
The crews were largely landsmen; of the flag officers and cap- 
tains, not one had been above the grade of lieutenant three 
years before, and nine of them had been merchant skippers 
with no naval experience whatever. On board were two dele- 
gates of the National Convention, whose double duties seem 
to have been to watch the officers and help them command. To 
take the place of experience there was revolutionary fervor, 
evidenced in the change of ship-names to such resounding ap- 
pellations as La Montague, Patriote, Vengeur du Peuple, 
Tyrannicide, and Revolutionnaire. There was also more con- 
fidence than was ever felt again by French sailors during the 
war. "Intentionally disregarding subtle evolutions," said the 
delegate Jean Bon Saint Andree, "perhaps our sailors will 
think it more appropriate and effective to resort to the board- 
ing tactics in which the French were always victorious, and 
thus astonish the world by new prodigies of valor." "If they 
had added to their courage a little training," said the same 
commissioner after the battle, "the day might have been ours." 

The commander in chief, Villaret de Joyeuse, who had won 
his lieutenancy and the esteem of Suffren in the American war, 



FIRST OF JUNE AND CAMPERDOWN 229 

was no such scorner of wary tactics. Thus when the two 
fleets, more by accident than calculation on either side, came 
in contact on the morning of May 28, 1794, about 400 miles 
west of Ushant, it would have been quite possible for him to 
have closed with the British, who were 10 miles to leeward in 
a fresh southerly wind. But his orders were not to fight unless 
it were essential to protect the convoy, and since this was 
thought to be close at hand, he first drew away to the east- 
ward, with the British in pursuit. 

The chase continued during the remainder of this day and 
the day following, with partial engagements and complicated 
maneuvering, the net result of which was that in the end Howe, 
in spite of the superior sailing qualities of the French ships, 
had kept in touch with them, driven his own vessels through 
their line to a windward position, and forced the withdrawal 
of four units, with the loss of but one of his own. Two days 
of thick weather followed, during which both fleets stood to 
the northwest in the same relative positions, the French, very 
fortunately indeed, securing a reenforcement of four fresh 
ships from detachments earlier at sea. 

Now 26 French to 25 British, the two fleets on the morning 
of the final engagement were moving to westward on the still 
southerly wind, in two long, roughly parallel lines. Confident 
of the individual superiority of his ships, the British admiral 
had no wish for further maneuvering, in which his own cap- 
tains had shown themselves none too reliable and the enemy 
commander not unskilled. Possibly also he feared the con- 
fusion of a complicated plan, for it was notorious (as may be 
verified by looking over his correspondence) that Howe had 
the greatest difficulty in making himself intelligible with tongue 
or pen. His orders were therefore to bear up together toward 
the enemy and attack ship to ship, without effort at concen- 
tration, and with but one noteworthy departure from the time- 
honored tactics in which he had been schooled. This was that 
the battle should be close and decisive. The instructions were 
that each ship should if possible break through the line astern 
of her chosen opponent, raking the ships on each side as she 
went through, and continue the action to leeward, in position 



230 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

to cut off retreat. "I don't want the ships to be bilge to 
bilge," said Howe to the officers of his flagship, the Queen 
Charlotte, "but if you can lock the yardarms, so much the bet- 
ter; the battle will be the quicker decided." The approach was 
leisurely, nearly in line abreast, on a course slightly diagonal 
to that of the enemy. At 10 a. m. the Queen Charlotte, in the 
center of the British line, shoved past just under the stern of 
Villaret's flagship, the Montague, raking her with a terrible 
broadside which is said to have struck down 300 of her men. 
As was likely to result from the plan of attack, the ships in 
the van of the attacking force were more closely and promptly 
engaged than those of the rear; only six ships actually broke 
through, but there was hot fighting all along the line. 

Famous among the struggles in the melee was the epic three- 
hour combat of the Brunswick, next astern of Howe, and the 
Vengeur, both 74's. With the British vessel's anchors hooked 
in her opponent's port forechannels, the two drifted away to 
leeward, the Brunswick by virtue of flexible rammers alone 
able to use her lower deck guns, which were given alternately 
extreme elevation and depression and sent shot tearing through 
the Vengeur' s deck and hull ; whereas the Vengeur, with a su- 
perior fire of carronades and musketry, swept the enemy's 
upper deck. When the antagonists wrenched apart, the Bruns- 
wick had lost 158 of her complement of 600 men. The Ven- 
geur was slowly sinking and went down at 6 p. M v with a loss 
of 250 killed and wounded and 100 more drowned. "As we 
drew away," wrote a survivor, "we heard some of our com- 
rades still offering prayers for the welfare of their country; 
the last cries of these unfortunates were, 'Vive la Republique !' 
They died uttering them." 

Out of the confusion, an hour after the battle had begun, 
Villaret was able to form a column of 16 ships to leeward, and 
though ten of his vessels lay helpless between the lines, four 
drifted or were towed down to him and escaped. Howe has 
been sharply criticized for letting these cripples get away ; but 
the battered condition of his fleet and his own complete physical 
exhaustion led him to rest content with six prizes aside from 
the sunken Vengeur. The criticism has also been made that 



FIRST OF JUNE AND CAMPERDOWN 231 

he should have further exerted himself to secure a junction 
with the detachment on convoy duty, which on May 19 was 
returning and not far away. If he had at that time held his 
32 ships between Brest and Rochefort, with scouts well dis- 
tributed to westward, he would have been more certain to have 
intercepted both Villaret's fleet and the convoy, which would 
have approached in company, and both of which, with the 
British searching in a body at sea, stood a good chance of 



/Wind S.kyW. 

French, i6 Ships v ^_ ' N '■ ^~-~ *" _ 

o o o o o o o o c=> c=» o o o & c=- o o <r> o o c> o o o o> o-; 



The ApDPO&Ch 
I 8.00-IO.OO C M about 10.00 a.Chortotte po.ss^s under stern of Me 




starboard tack 



BATTLE OF THE FIRST OF JUNE, 1794 

Based on diagram in Mahan's Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution, 

Vol. I, p. 136.) 

escape. Howe's hope, no doubt, was to meet the convoy un- 
guarded. The latter, protected by fog, actually crossed on 
May 30 the waters fought over on the 29th, and twelve days 
later safely reached the French coast. Robespierre had told 
Villaret that if the convoy were captured he should answer for 
it with his life. Hence the French admiral declared years later 
that the loss of his battleships troubled him relatively little. 
"While Howe amused himself refitting them, I saved the con- 
voy, and I saved my head." 

Though the escape of the convoy enabled the French to 



232 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

boast a "strategic victory," the First of June in reality estab- 
lished British prestige and proved a crushing blow to French 
morale. A British defeat, on the other hand, might have 
brought serious consequences, for within a year's time the Al- 
lied armies, including the British under the Duke of York, 
were driven out of Holland, the Batavian Republic was estab- 
lished in league with France (February, 1795), and both Spain 
and Prussia backed out of the war. Austria remained Eng- 
land's only active ally. 

During the remainder of 1794 and the year following only 
minor or indecisive encounters occurred in the northern theater 
of war, lack of funds and naval supplies hampering the re- 
covery of the French fleet from the injuries inflicted by Howe. 
Ill health forcing the latter's retirement from sea duty, he was 
succeeded in the Channel by Lord Bridport, who continued his 
predecessor's easy-going methods until the advent of Jervis 
in 1799 instituted a more rigorous regime. It was not yet 
recognized that the wear and tear on ships and crews during 
sea duty was less serious than the injurious effect of long stays 
in port upon sea spirit and morale. 

French Projects of Invasion 

With their fleets passive, the French resorted vigorously to 
commerce warfare, and at the same time kept England con- 
stantly perturbed by rumors, grandiose plans, and actual un- 
dertakings of invasion. That these earlier efforts failed was 
due as much to ill luck and bad management as to the work 
of Bridport's fleet. Intended, moreover, primarily as diver- 
sions to keep England occupied at home and sicken her of the 
war, they did not altogether fail of their aim. Some of these 
projects verged on the ludicrous, as that of corraling a band 
of the criminals and royalist outlaws that infested France and 
dropping them on the English coast for a wild campaign of 
murder and pillage. Fifteen hundred of these Chouans were 
actually landed at Fishguard in February of 1797, but promptly 
surrendered, and France had to give good English prisoners in 



FIRST OF JUNE AND CAMPERDOWN 233 

exchange for them on the threat that they would be turned 
loose again on French soil. 

Much more serious was General Hoche's expedition to Ire- 
land of the winter before. Though Hoche wished to use for 
the purpose the army of over 100,000 with which he had sub- 
dued revolt in the Vendee, the Government was willing to ven- 
ture a force of only 15,000, which set sail from Brest, De- 
cember 15, 1796, in 17 ships-of-the-line, together with a large 
number of smaller war-vessels and transports. Heavy weather 
and bad leadership, helped along by British frigates with false 
signals, scattered the fleet on the first night out. It never 
again got together ; and though a squadron with 6,ooo soldiers 
on board was actually for a week or more in the destination, 
Bantry Bay, not a man was landed, and by the middle of Jan- 
uary nearly all of the flotilla was back in France. The British 
squadron under Colport, which had been on the French coast 
at the time of the departure, had in the meanwhile been obliged 
to make port for supplies. Bridport with the main fleet left 
Portsmouth, 250 miles from the scene of operations, four days 
after news of the French departure. During the whole affair 
neither he nor Colport took a single prize. 

Even so small a force cooperating with rebellion in Ireland 
might have proved a serious annoyance, though not a grave 
danger. Invasion on a grand scale, which Napoleon's vic- 
torious campaign in Italy and the peace with Austria (pre- 
liminaries at Loeben, April, 1797) now made possible, was 
effectually forestalled by two decisive victories at sea. Bona- 
parte, who was to lead the invasion, did not minimize its diffi- 
culties. "To make a descent upon England without being mas- 
ter of the sea," he wrote at this time, "is the boldest and most 
difficult operation ever attempted." Yet the flotilla of small 
craft necessary was collected, army forces were designated, and 
in February of 1798 Bonaparte was at Dunkirk. All this 
served no doubt to screen the Egyptian preparations, which 
amid profound secrecy were already under way. The Egyp- 
tian campaign was an indirect blow at England ; but the direct 
blow would certainly have been struck had not the naval en- 
gagements of Cape St. Vincent (February, 1797) and Cam- 



234 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

perdown (August, 1797) settled the question of mastery of the 
sea by removing the naval support of Spain and Holland on 
the right and left wings. 

The Battle of Camperdown 

Admiral Duncan's victory of Camperdown, here taken first 
as part of the events in northern waters, is noteworthy in that 
it was achieved not only against ever-dangerous opponents, 
but with a squadron which during the preceding May and June 
had been in the very midst of the most serious mutiny in the 
history of the British navy. In Bridport's fleet at Portsmouth 
this was not so much a mutiny as a well organized strike, the 
sailors it is true taking full control of the ships, and forcing 
the Admiralty and Parliament to grant their well justified de- 
mands for better treatment and better pay. Possibly a secret 
sympathy with their grievances explains the apparent helpless- 
ness of the officers. The men on their part went about the busi- 
ness quietly, and even rated some of their former officers as 
midshipmen, in special token of esteem. At the Nore, how- 
ever, and in Duncan's squadron at Yarmouth, the mutiny was 
marked by bloodshed and taint of disloyalty, little surprising 
in view of the disaffected Irish, ex-criminals, impressed mer- 
chant sailors, and other unruly elements in the crews. In the 
end 18 men were put to death and many others sentenced. 
Duncan faced the trouble with the courage but not with the 
mingling of fair treatment and sharp justice which marked its 
suppression by that great master of discipline, Jervis, in the 
fleet off Spain. On his own ship and another, Duncan drew 
up the loyal marines under arms, spoke to the sailors, and won 
their allegiance, picking one troublesome spirit up bodily and 
shaking him over the side. But the rest of the squadron sud- 
denly sailed off two days later to join the mutineers at the 
Nore, where all the ships were then in the hands of the crews. 
With his two faithful ships, Duncan made for the Texel, 
swearing that if the Dutch came out he would go down with 
colors flying. Fortunately he was rejoined before that event 
by the rest of his squadron, the mutinous ships having been 



FIRST OF JUNE AND CAMPERDOWN 235 

either retaken by the officers or voluntarily surrendered by the 
men. 

The whole affair, among the ships in Thames mouth, was 
over in a month's time, from mid-May to mid-June, so quickly 
that the enemy had little chance to seize the advantage. The 
Dutch, driven willy-nilly into alliance with France and not too 
eager to embark upon desperate adventures in the new cause, 
were nevertheless not restrained from action by any kind feel- 






„ . t * 

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, triumph'^ ^ardent g? 

>>> ' x??VRIOHEID 

=» • O' (winter) 

* s~y — *j 

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WASSENAR 

^^ MONARCH 

\pOWERFUlY fg? JUPITER "*~* A 



/^HAARLEM 
& OE> SHIPS CAPTURED S 



BATTLE OF CAMPERDOWN, OCTOBER II, 1797, ABOUT 12 :30 P.M. 
British, 16 of the line; Dutch, 15 of the line. 

ing for England, who had seized their ships and colonies and 
ruined their trade. When at last, during a brief withdrawal 
of Duncan, their fleet under Admiral de Winter attempted a 
cruise, it was in a run-down condition. Aside from small 
units, it consisted of 15 ships (4 of 74 guns, 5 of 68, 2 of 64, 
and 4 under 60), against Duncan's stronger force of 16 (7 of 
74, 7 of 64 and 2 of 50). The Dutch ships were flat-bottomed 
and light-draft for navigation in their shallow coastal waters, 
and generally inferior to British vessels of similar rating, even 
though the latter were left-overs from the Channel Fleet. 
On the morning of the Battle of Camperdown, October II, 



236 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

1797, the Dutch were streaming along their coast on a north- 
west wind bent on return into the Texel. Pressing forward 
in pursuit, Duncan when in striking distance determined to 
prevent the enemy's escape into shallow water by breaking 
through their line and attacking to leeward. The signal to 
this effect, however, was soon changed to "Close action," and 
only the two leading ships eventually broke through. The two 
British divisions — for they were still in cruising formation and 
strung out by the pursuit — came down before the wind. On- 
slow, the second in command, in the Monarch, struck the line 
first at 12 130 and engaged the Dutch Jupiter, fourth from the 
rear. Eighteen minutes later Duncan in the Venerable closed 
similarly to leeward of the Staten Generaal, and afterward the 
Vrijheid, in the Dutch van. 

The two leaders were soon supported — though there was 
straggling on both sides; and the battle that ensued was the 
bloodiest and fiercest of this period of the war. The British 
lost 825 out of a total of 8221 officers and men, 1 more than 
half the loss occurring in the first four ships into action. The 
British ships were also severely injured by the gruelling broad- 
sides during the onset, but finally took 11 prizes, all of them 
injured beyond repair. Though less carefully thought out and 
executed, the plan of the attack closely resembles that of Nel- 
son at Trafalgar. The head-on approach seems not to have 
involved fatal risks against even such redoubtable opponents 
as the Dutch, and it insured decisive results. 

Duncan's otherwise undistinguished career, and the some- 
what unstudied methods of his one victory, may explain why 
he has not attained the fame which the energy displayed and 
results achieved would seem to deserve. "He was a valiant 
officer," writes his contemporary Jervis, "little versed in subtle- 
ties of tactics, by which he would have been quickly confused. 
When he saw the enemy, he ran down upon them, without 
thinking of a fixed order of battle. To conquer, he counted 

1 As compared with this loss of 10%, the casualties in Nelson's three 
chief battles were as follows: Nile, 896 out of 7401, or 12.1%; Copen- 
hagen, 941 out of 6892, or 13.75%; Trafalgar, 1690 out of 17,256, or 
9-73%- 



FIRST OF JUNE AND CAMPERDOWN 237 

on the bold example he gave his captains, and the event com- 
pletely justified his hopes." 

Whatever its tactical merits, the battle had the important 
strategic effect of putting the Dutch out of the war. The 
remnants of their fleet were destroyed in harbor during an 
otherwise profitless expedition into Holland led by the Duke of 
York in 1799. By this time, when naval requirements and 
expanding trade had exhausted England's supply of seamen, 
and forced her to relax her navigation laws, it is estimated 
that no less than 20,000 Dutch sailors had left their own idle 
ships and were serving on British traders and men-of-war. 1 

1 For references, see end of Chapter XIII, page 285. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE NAPOLEONIC WARS [Continued] : THE 
RISE OF NELSON 

In the Mediterranean, where the protection of commerce, the 
fate of Italy and all southern Europe, and the exposed interests 
of France gave abundant motives for the presence of a British 
fleet, the course of naval events may be sufficiently indicated 
by following the work of Nelson, who came thither in 1793 
in command of the Agamemnon (64) and remained until the 
withdrawal of the fleet at the close of 1796. Already marked 
within the service, in the words of his senior, Hood, as "an 
officer to be consulted on questions relative to naval tactics," 
Nelson was no doubt also marked as possessed of an uncom- 
fortable activity and independence of mind. Singled out never- 
theless for responsible detached service, he took a promi- 
nent part in the occupation of Corsica, where at the siege of 
Calvi he lost the sight of his right eye, and later commanded 
a small squadron supporting the left flank of the Austrian 
army on the Riviera. 

In these latter operations, during 1795 and 1796, Nelson 
felt that much more might have been done. The Corniche 
coast route into Italy, the only one at first open to the French, 
was exposed at many points to fire from ships at sea, and much 
of the French army supplies as well as their heavy artillery had 
to be transported in boats along the coast. "The British fleet 
could have prevented the invasion of Italy," wrote Nelson five 
years later, "if our friend Hotham [who had succeeded Hood 
as commander in chief in the Mediterranean] had kept his fleet 
on that coast." 1 Hotham felt, perhaps rightly, that the neces- 
sity of watching the French ships at Toulon made this impos- 

1 Dispatches, June 6, 1800. 

238 



THE RISE OF NELSON 239 

sible. But had the Toulon fleet been destroyed or effectually 
crippled at either of the two opportunities which offered in 
1795, no such need would have existed; the British fleet would 
have dominated the Mediterranean, and exercised a controlling 
influence on the wavering sympathies of the Italian states and 
Spain. At the first of these opportunities, on the 13th and 
14th of March, Hotham said they had done well enough in 
capturing two French ships-of-the-line. "Now," remarked 
Nelson, whose aggressive pursuit had led to the capture, "had 
we taken 10 sail and allowed the nth to escape, when it had 
been possible to have got at her, I should not have called it 
well done." And again of the second encounter : "To say how 
much we wanted Lord Hood on the 13th of July, is to say, 
'Will you have all the French fleet, or no action?' " History, 
and especially naval history, is full of might-have-beens. Ag- 
gressive action establishing naval predominance might have 
prevented Napoleon's brilliant invasion and conquest of Italy; 
Spain would then have steered clear of the French alliance; 
and the Egyptian campaign would have been impossible. 

The succession of Sir John Jervis to the Mediterranean com- 
mand in November, 1795, instituted at once a new order of 
things, in which inspiring leadership, strict discipline, and 
closest attention to the health of crews, up-keep of vessels, and 
every detail of ship and fleet organization soon brought the 
naval forces under him to what has been judged the highest 
efficiency attained by any fleet during the war. Jervis had 
able subordinates — Nelson, Collingwood and Troubridge, to 
carry the list no further; but he may claim a kind of paternal 
share in molding the military character of these men. 

Between Jervis and Nelson in particular there existed ever 
the warmest mutual confidence and admiration. Yet the con- 
trast between them well illustrates the difference between all- 
round professional and administrative ability, possessed in high 
degree by the older leader, and supreme fighting genius, which, 
in spite of mental and moral qualities far inferior, has rightly 
won Nelson a more lasting fame. As a member of parliament 
before the war, as First Lord of the Admiralty from 1801 to 
1803, and indeed in his sea commands, Jervis displayed a 



240 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

breadth of judgment, a knowledge of the world, a mastery of 
details of administration, to which Nelson could not pretend. 
In the organization of the Toulon and the Brest blockades, 
and in the suppression of mutiny in 1797, Jervis better than 
Nelson illustrates conventional ideals of military discipline. 
When appointed to the Channel command in 1799 he at once 
adopted the system of keeping the bulk of the fleet constantly 
on the enemy coast "well within Ushant with an easterly wind." 
Captains were to be on deck when ships came about at what- 
ever hour. In port there were no night boats and no night leave 
for officers. To one officer who ventured a protest Jervis wrote 
that he "ought not to delay one day his intention to retire." 
"May the discipline of the Mediterranean never be introduced 
in the Channel," was a toast on Jervis's appointment to the 
latter squadron. "May his next glass of wine choke the 
wretch," was the wish of an indignant officer's wife. Jervis 
may have been a martinet, but it was he, more than any other 
officer, who instilled into the British navy the spirit of war. 
In the Mediterranean, however, he arrived too late. There, 
as in the Atlantic, the French Directory after the experiments 
of 1794 and 1795 had now abandoned the idea of risking their 
battleships ; and while these still served effectively in port as a 
fleet in being, their crews were turned to commerce warfare 
or transport flotilla work for the army. Bonaparte's ragged 
heroes were driving the Austrians out of Italy. Sardinia made 
peace in May of 1796. Spain closed an offensive and defen- 
sive alliance with the French Republic in August, putting a 
fleet of 50 of the line (at least on paper) on Jervis's communi- 
cations and making further tenure of the Mediterranean a dan- 
gerous business. By October, 26 Spanish ships had joined the 
12 French then at Toulon. Even so, Jervis with his force of 
22 might have hazarded action, if his subordinate Mann, with 
a detached squadron of 7 of these, had not fled to England. 
Assigning to Nelson the task of evacuating Corsica and later 
Elba, Jervis now took station outside the straits, where on 
February 13, 1797, Nelson rejoined his chief, whose strength 
still consisted of 15 of the line. 



THE RISE OF NELSON 241 

The Battle of Cape St. Vincent 

The Spanish fleet, now 27, was at this time returning to 
Cadiz, as a first step toward a grand naval concentration in 
the north. A stiff Levanter having thrown the Spanish far 
beyond their destination, they were returning eastward when 
on February 14, 1797, the two fleets came in contact within 
sight of Cape St. Vincent. In view of the existing political 
situation, and the known inefficiency of the Spanish in sea fight- 
ing, Jervis decided to attack. "A victory," he is said to have 
remarked, "is very essential to England at this hour." 

As a fresh westerly wind blew away the morning fog, the 
Spanish were fully revealed to southward, running before the 
wind, badly scattered, with 7 ships far in advance and thus 
to leeward of the rest. After some preliminary pursuit, the 
British formed in a single column (Troubridge in the Culloden 
first, the flagship Victory seventh, and Nelson in the Captain 
third from the rear), and took a southerly course which would 
carry them between the two enemy groups. As soon as they 
found themselves thus separated, the Spanish weather division 
hauled their wind, opened fire, and ran to northward along the 
weather side of the British line; while the lee division at first 
also turned northward and made some effort to unite with the 
rest of their company by breaking through the enemy forma- 
tion, but were thrown back by a heavy broadside from the 
Victory. Having accomplished his first purpose, Jervis had 
already, at about noon, hoisted the signal to "tack in succes- 
sion," which meant that each ship should continue her course 
to the point where the Culloden came about and then follow 
her in pursuit of the enemy weather division. This critical 
and much discussed maneuver appears entirely justified. The 
British by tacking in succession kept their column still between 
the parts of the enemy, its rear covering the enemy lee di- 
vision, and the whole formation still in perfect order and con- 
trol, as it would not have been had the ships tacked simultane- 
ously. Again, if the attack had been made on the small group 
to leeward, the Spanish weather division could easily have run 



242 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 




WIND 
West by South 



I * 



f Excellent (Collingwood) 

f Diadem 

t$ Captain (Nelson) 

$ Namur 

f Britannia 

9 Barfleuf 

I Goliath 

§ Egmont / 



SPANISH 

MAIN DIVISION 

(21 ships) 



o 



^ Victory (Jen/iS* 



" Irresistible 
9 Colossus 

9 Orion 
.Prince 



\? SPANISH 
SHIPS 
V LEEWARD 



V M \ -i-iiiite 

/? U /) \ "George 

^frfJJ^^^J^ \9 Blenheim 



\ 



oroaa to Uswud 

o-.-o. 



Culloden (tacks) 



c^ 



'% 



1ST. PHASE: Having eut off Spanish Iff ward ships, Jo-vis tacks to engage main division 



^ Sa "A/; Co , 



''S'antisima 
Trinidad 



San Josef 



SPANISH 

MAIN DIVISION 

(18 ships) 






\ 



Excellent 




^ I 



^..'Captain (wears) \ f 



\ 



Culloden 



v 

T 
♦ 

^a Victory 



(JO 



0/ 



' SPANISH 
LEE DIVISION 
(9 ships) 



WIND 
West South-west 



<? 



2KB. PHASE: Captain wears to prevent Spanish van from running tp leeward. 



BATTLE OF CAPE ST. VINCENT, FEBRUARY 14, 1797 
British: 15 ships, 1232 guns. Spanish: 27 ships, 2286 guns. 



THE RISE OF NELSON 243 

down into the action and thus brought their full strength to 
bear. 

But against an enemy so superior in numbers more was 
needed to keep the situation in hand. Shortly before one 
o'clock, when several British vessels had already filled away on 
the new course, Nelson from his position well back in the 
column saw that the leading ships of the main enemy division 
were swinging off to eastward as if to escape around the Brit- 
ish rear. Eager to get into the fighting, of which his present 
course gave little promise, and without waiting for orders, he 
wore out of the column, passed between the two ships next 
astern, and threw himself directly upon the three big three- 
deckers, including the flagship Santisima Trindad (130 guns), 
which headed the enemy line. Before the fighting was over, 
his ship was badly battered, "her foretopmast and wheel shot 
away, and not a sail, shroud or rope left" ; 1 but the Culloden 
and other van ships soon came up, and also Collingwood in the 
Excellent from the rear, after orders from Jervis for which 
Nelson had not waited. Out of the melee the British emerged 
with four prizes, Nelson himself having boarded the San Nico- 
las (80), cleared her decks, and with reinforcements from his 
own ship passed across her to receive the surrender of the San 
Josef (112). The swords of the vanquished Spanish, Nel- 
son says, "I gave to William Fearney, one of my bargemen, 
who placed them with the greatest sangfroid under his arm." 

For Nelson's initiative (which is the word for such actions 
when they end well) Jervis had only the warmest praise, and 
when his fleet captain, Calder, ventured a comment on the 
breach of orders, Jervis gave the tart answer, "Ay, and if ever 
you offend in the same way I promise you a forgiveness be- 
forehand." Jervis was made Earl St. Vincent, and Nelson, 
who never hid his light under a bushel, shared at least in popu- 
lar acclaim. It was not indeed a sweeping victory, and there 
is little doubt that had the British admiral so chosen, he might 
have done much more. But enough had been accomplished to 
discourage Spanish naval activities in the French cause for a 
long time to come. They were hopelessly outclassed; but in 
, a Nelson's Dispatches, Vol. II, p. 345. 



244. A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

their favor it should be borne in mind that their ships were 
miserably manned, the crews consisting of ignorant peasants 
of whom it is reported that they said prayers before going 
aloft, and with whom their best admiral, Mazzaredo, had re- 
fused to sail. Moreover, they were fighting half-heartedly, 
lacking the inspiration of a great national cause, without which 
victories are rarely won. 

The defeat of the Spanish, as Jervis had foreseen, was 
timely. Mantua had just capitulated ; British efforts to secure 
an honorable peace had failed; consols were at 51, and specie 
payments stopped by the Bank of England; Austria was on 
the verge of separate negotiations, the preliminaries of which 
were signed at Loeben on April 18; France, in the words of 
Bonaparte, could now "turn all her forces against England 
and oblige her to a prompt peace." 1 The news of St. Vincent 
was thus a ray of light on a very dark horizon. Its strategic 
value, along with the Battle of Camperdown, has already been 
made clear. 

The British fleet, after refitting at Lisbon, took up a block- 
ade of the Spanish at Cadiz which continued through the next 
two years. Discontent and mutiny, which threatened with 
each fresh ship from home, was guarded against by strict dis- 
cipline, careful attention to health and diet, and by minor en- 
terprises which served as diversions, such as the bombardment 
of Cadiz and the unsuccessful attack on Santa Cruz in the 
Canary Islands, July 24-25, 1797, in which Nelson lost his 
right arm. 

The Battle of the Nile 

Nelson's return to the Cadiz blockade in May, 1798, after 
months of suffering in England, was coincident with the gath- 
ering of a fresh storm cloud in the Mediterranean, though 
the direction in which it threatened was still completely con- 
cealed. While Sicily, Greece, Portugal and even Ireland were 
mentioned by the British Admiralty as possible French objec- 
tives, Egypt was apparently not thought of. Yet its strategic 
position between three continents remained as important as 
1 Correspondence, III, 346. 



THE RISE OF NELSON 



245 




246 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

in centuries past, controlling the trade of the Levant and 
threatening India by land or sea. "The time is not far dis- 
tant," Bonaparte had already written, "when we shall feel that 
truly to destroy England we must take possession of Egypt." 
In point of fact the strength of England rested not merely 
on the wealth of the Indies, but on her merchant fleets, naval 
control, home products and manufactures, in short her whole 
industrial and commercial development, too strong to be struck 
down by a blow in this remote field. Still, if the continued 
absence of a British fleet from the Mediterranean could be 
counted on, the Egyptian campaign was the most effective 
move against her that offered at the time. It was well that 
the British Admiralty rose to the danger. Jervis, though he 
pointed out the risks involved, was directed to send Nelson 
with an advance squadron of 3 ships, later strengthened to 
14, to watch the concentration of land and naval forces at 
Toulon. "The appearance of a British fleet in the Mediter- 
ranean," wrote the First Lord, Spencer, in urging the move, 
"is a condition on which the fate of Europe may be stated 
to depend." 

Before a strong northwest wind the French armada on May 
19 left Toulon — 13 of the line, 13 smaller vessels, and a 
fleet of transports which when joined by contingents from 
Genoa, Corsica, and Civita Vecchia brought the total to 400 
sail, crowded with over 30,000 troops. Of the fighting fleet 
there is the usual tale of ships carelessly fitted out, one-third 
short-handed, and supplied with but two months' food — a 
tale which simply points the truth that the winning of naval 
campaigns begins months or years before. 

The gale from which the French found shelter under Sar- 
dinia and Corsica fell later with full force on Nelson to the 
westward of the islands. His flagship the Vanguard lost her 
foremast and remaining topmasts, while at the same time his 
four frigates, so essential in the search that followed, were 
scattered and failed to rejoin. Having by extraordinary exer- 
tions refitted in Sardinia in the short space of four days, he 
was soon again off Toulon, but did not learn of the enemy's 
departure until May 31, and even then he got no clue a* to 



THE RISE OF NELSON 247 

where they had gone. Here he was joined on June 7 by the 
promised reinforcements, bringing his squadron to 13 74's 
and the Lecmder of 50 guns. 

The ensuing search continued for three months, until Au- 
gust 1, the date of the Battle of the Nile. During this period, 
Nelson appears to best advantage; in the words of David 
Hannay, he was an "embodied flame of resolution, with none 
of the vulgar bluster that was to appear later." 

Moving slowly southward, the French flotilla had spent 
ten days in the occupation of Malta — the surrender of which 
was chiefly due to French influence among the Knights of 
St. John who held the island — and departed on June 19 for 
their destination, following a circuitous route along the south 
side of Crete and thence to the African coast 70 miles west 
of Alexandria. 

Learning off Cape Passaro on the 22d of the enemy's 
departure from Malta, Nelson made direct for Alexandria 
under fair wind and press of sail. He reached the port two 
days ahead of Bonaparte, and finding it empty, at once set 
out to retrace his course, his impetuous energy betraying 
him into what was undoubtedly a hasty move. The two fleets 
had been but 60 miles apart on the night of the 25th. Had 
they met, though Bonaparte had done his utmost by organiza- 
tion and drill to prepare for such an emergency, a French dis- 
aster would have been almost inevitable, and Napoleon, in 
the amusingly partisan words of Nelson's biographer Southey, 
"would have escaped those later crimes that have incarnadined 
his soul." Nelson had planned in case of such an encounter to 
detach three of his ships to attack the transports. 

The trying month that now intervened, spent by the British 
fleet in a vain search along the northern coast of the Medi- 
terranean, a brief stop at Syracuse for water and supplies, 
and return, was not wholly wasted, for during this time the 
commander in chief was in frequent consultation with his 
captains, securing their hearty support, and familiarizing them 
with his plans for action in whatever circumstances a meeting 
might occur. An interesting reference to this practice of Nel- 
son's appears in a later characterization of him written by the 



248 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

French Admiral Decres to Napoleon. "His boastfulness," so 
the comment runs, "is only equalled by his ineptitude, but he 
has the saving quality of making no pretense to any other 
virtues than boldness and good nature, so that he is accessi- 
ble to the counsels of those under him." As to who dom- 
inated these conferences and who profited by them we may 
form our own opinion. It was by such means that Nelson 
fostered a spirit of full cooperation and mutual confidence 
between himself and his subordinates which justified his af- 
fectionate phrase, "a band of brothers." 

The result was seen at the Nile. If rapid action lost the 
chance of battle a month before, it did much to insure victory 
when the opportunity came, and it was made possible by each 
captain's full grasp of what was to be done. "Time is every- 
thing," to quote a familiar phrase of Nelson; "five minutes 
may spell the difference between victory and defeat." It was 
two in the afternoon when the British, after looking into 
Alexandria, first sighted the French fleet at anchor in Aboukir 
Bay, and it was just sundown when the leading ship Goliath 
rounded the Guerrier's bows. The battle was fought in dark- 
ness. In the face of a fleet protected by shoals and shore bat- 
teries, with no trustworthy charts or pilots, with ships still 
widely separated by their varying speeds, a less thoroughly 
drilled force under a less ardent leader would have felt the 
necessity of delaying action until the following day. Nelson 
never hesitated. His ships went into action in the order in 
which they reached the scene. 

The almost decisive advantage thus gained is evident from 
the confusion which then reigned in Aboukir Bay. In spite 
of the repeated letters from Bonaparte urging him to secure 
his fleet in Alexandria harbor, in spite of repeated soundings 
which showed this course possible, the French Admiral Brueys 
with a kind of despondent inertia still lay in this exposed 
anchorage at the Rosetta mouth of the Nile. Mortars and 
cannon had been mounted on Aboukir point, but it was known 
that their range did not cover the head of the French line. 
The frigates and scout vessels that might have given more 
timely warning were at anchor in the bay. Numerous water 



THE RISE OF NELSON 



249 



parties were on shore and with them the ships' boats needed 
to stretch cables from one vessel to another and rig gear 
for winding ships, as had been vaguely planned. At a hur- 
ried council it was proposed to put to sea, but this was given 
up for the sufficient reason that there was no time. The French 
were cleared for action only on the out-board side. Their 
admiral was chiefly fearful of attack in the rear, a fear rea- 
sonable enough if his ships had been sailing before the wind 
at sea; but at anchor, with the Aboukir batteries ineffective 
and the wind blowing directly down the line, attack upon the 




van would be far more dangerous, since support could less 
easily be brought up from the rear. 

It was on the head of the line that the attack came. Nelson 
had given the one signal that "his intention was to attack 
the van and center as they lay at anchor, according to the 
plan before developed." This plan called for doubling, two 
ships to the enemy's one. With a fair wind from the north- 
northwest Captain Foley in the Goliath at 6 p. m. reached the 
Guerrier, the headmost of the thirteen ships in the enemy line. 
Either by instant initiative, or more likely in accordance with 
previous plans in view of such an opportunity, he took his ship 
inside the line, his anchor dragging slightly so as to bring 
him up on the quarter of the second enemy vessel, the Con- 
querant. The Zealous, following closely, anchored on the 



250 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

bows of the Guerrier; the Orion engaged inside the fifth ship; 
the Theseus inside the third; and the Audacious, passing be- 
tween the first two of the enemy, brought up on the Con- 
queranfs bow. With these five engaged inside, Nelson in the 
Vanguard and the two ships following him engaged respec- 
tively outside the third, fourth and fifth of the enemy. Thus 
the concentration on the van was eight to five. 

About a half hour later the Bellerophon and the Majestic 
attacked respectively the big flagship Orient (no) in the cen- 
ter and the Tonnant (80) next astern, and against these su- 
perior antagonists suffered severely, losing in killed and 
wounded 390. men divided about equally between them, which 
was nearly half the total loss of 896 and greater than the 
total at Cape St. Vincent. Both later drifted almost helpless 
down the line. The Culloden under Troubridge, a favorite 
of both Jervis and Nelson, had unfortunately grounded and 
stuck fast on Aboukir shoal ; but the Swiftsure and the Alex- 
ander came up two hours after the battle had begun as a sup- 
port to the ships in the centre, the Swiftsure engaging the 
Orient, and the Alexander the Franklin next ahead, while the 
smaller Leander skillfully chose a position where she could rake 
the two. By this time all five of the French van had sur- 
rendered ; the Orient was in flames and blew up about 10 o'clock 
with the loss of all but 70 men. Admiral Brueys, thrice 
wounded, died before the explosion. Of the four ships in the 
rear, only two, the Guillaume Tell under Admiral Villeneuve 
and the Genereux, were able to cut their cables next morning 
and get away. Nelson asserted that, had he not been incapaci- 
tated by a severe scalp wound in the action, even these would 
not have escaped. Of the rest, two were burned and nine cap- 
tured. Among important naval victories, aside from such one- 
sided slaughters as those of our own Spanish war, it remains 
the most overwhelming in history. 

The effect was immediate throughout Europe, attesting 
clearly the contemporary importance attached to sea control. 
"It was this battle," writes Admiral de la Graviere, "which for 
two years delivered over the Mediterranean to the British and 
called thither the squadrons of Russia, which shut up our 



THE RISE OF NELSON 



251 



WIND ^| $ 
North Northiwest 




BATTLE OF THE NILE 
BsmSH C^ F8ENCH 



252 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

army in the midst of a hostile people and led the Porte to 
declare against us, which put India beyond our reach and 
thrust France to the brink of ruin, for it rekindled the hardly 
extinct war with Austria and brought Suvaroff and the Aus- 
tro-Russians to our very frontiers." * 

The whole campaign affords an instance of an overseas ex- 
pedition daringly undertaken in, the face of a hostile fleet 
(though it should be remembered that the British were not 
in the Mediterranean when it was planned), reaching its 
destination by extraordinary good luck, and its possibilities 
then completely negatived by the reestablishment of enemy 
naval control. The efforts of the French army to extricate 
itself northward through Palestine were later thwarted 
partly by the squadron under Commodore Sidney Smith, which 
captured the siege guns sent to Acre by sea and aided the 
Turks in the defense of the fortress. In October of 1799 
Bonaparte escaped to France in a frigate. French fleets after- 
wards made various futile efforts to succor the forces left in 
Egypt, which finally surrendered to an army under Aber- 
cromby, just too late to strengthen the British in the peace 
negotiations of October, 1801. 

Nelson's subsequent activities in command of naval forces 
in Italian waters need not detain us. Physically and nerv- 
ously weakened from the effects of his wound and arduous 
campaign, he fell under the influence of Lady Hamilton and 
the wretched court of Naples, lent naval assistance to schemes 
of doubtful advantage to his country, and in June of 1800 
incurred the displeasure of the Admiralty by direct disobe- 
dience of orders to send support to Minorca. He returned to 
England at the close of 1800 with the glory of his victory 
somewhat tarnished, and with blemishes on his private char- 
acter which unfortunately, as will be seen, affected also his 
professional reputation. 

The Copenhagen Campaign 

Under the rapid scene-shifting of Napoleon, the political 
stage had by this time undergone another complete change from 

'GuERRES MarITIMES, II, 129. 



THE RISE OF NELSON 253 

that which followed the battle of the Nile. Partly at least 
as a consequence of that battle, the so-called Second Coalition 
had been formed by Great Britain, Russia, and Austria, the 
armies of the two latter powers, as already stated, carrying 
the war again to the French frontiers. It required only the 
presence of Bonaparte, in supreme control after the coup 
d'etat of the Eighteenth Brumaire (9 Nov., 1799), to turn 
the tide, rehabilitate the internal administration of France, 
and by the victories of Marengo in June and Flohenlinden in 
December of 1800 to force Austria once more to a separate 
peace. Paul I of Russia had already fallen out with his 
allies and withdrawn his armies and his great general, Suvar- 
off, a year before. Now, taken with a romantic admiration 
for Napoleon, and angry when the British, after retaking 
Malta, refused to turn it over to him as Grand Master of the 
Knights of St.- John, he was easily manipulated by Napoleon 
into active support of the latter's next move against England. 

This was the Armed Neutrality of 1800, the object of 
which, from the French standpoint, was to close to England 
the markets of the North, and combine against her the naval 
forces of the Baltic. Under French and Russian pressure, 
and in spite of the fact that all these northern nations stood 
to suffer in one way or another from rupture of trade relations 
with England, the coalition was accomplished in December, 
1800; Russia, Prussia, Sweden, and Denmark pledging 
themselves to resist infringements of neutral rights, whether 
by extension of contraband lists, seizure of enemy goods under 
neutral flag, search of vessels guaranteed innocent by their 
naval escort, or by other methods familiar then as in later 
times. These were measures which England, aiming both to 
ruin the trade of France and to cut off her naval supplies, 
felt bound to insist upon as the belligerent privileges of sea 
power. 

To overcome this new danger called for a mixture of force 
and diplomacy, which England supplied by sending to Den- 
mark an envoy with a 48-hour ultimatum, and along with him 
20 ships-of-the-line, which according to Nelson were "the 
best negotiators in Europe." The commander in chief of this 



254 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

squadron was Sir Hyde Parker, a hesitant and mediocre leader 
who could be trusted to do nothing (if that were necessary), 
and Nelson was made second in command. Influence, senior- 
ity, a clean record, and what-not, often lead to such choices, 
bad enough at any time but indefensible in time of war. For- 
tunately for England, when the reply of the Danish court 
showed that force was required, the two admirals virtually 
changed places with less friction than might have been ex- 
pected, and Nelson "lifted and carried on his shoulders the 
dead weight of his superior," * throughout the ensuing cam- 
paign. 

When the envoy on March 23 returned to the fleet, then 
anchored in the Cattegat, he brought an alarming tale of Dan- 
ish preparations, and an air of gloom pervaded the flagship 
when Nelson came aboard for a council of war. Copenhagen, 
it will be recalled, is situated on the eastern coast of Zealand, 
on the waterway called the Sound leading southward from 
the Cattegat to the Baltic. Directly in front of the city, a 
long shoal named the Middle Ground separates the Sound 
into two navigable channels, the one nearer Copenhagen known 
as the King's Deep (Kongedyb). The defenses of the Danish 
capital, so the envoy reported, were planned against attack 
from the northward. At this end of the line the formidable 
Trekroner Battery (68 guns), together with two ships-of-the- 
line and some smaller vessels, defended the narrow entrance 
to the harbor ; while protecting the city to the southward, along 
the flats at the edge of the King's Deep, was drawn up an array 
of about 37 craft ranging from ships-of-the-line to mere 
scows, mounting a total of 628 guns, and supported at some 
distance by batteries on land. Filled with patriotic ardor, 
half the male population of the city had volunteered to sup- 
port the forces manning these batteries afloat and ashore. 

Nelson's plan for meeting these obstacles, as well as his 
view of the whole situation, as presented at the council, was 
embodied in a memorandum dated the following day, which 
well illustrates his grasp of a general strategic problem. The 

1 Mahan, Influence of Sea Power upon French Revolution and Em- 
pire, II, 52. 



THE RISE OF NELSON 255 

Government's instructions, as well as Parker's preference, 
were apparently to wait in the Cattegat until the combined 
enemy forces should choose to come out and fight. Instead, 
the second in command advocated immediate action. "Not 
a moment," he wrote, "should be lost in attacking the enemy ; 
they will every day and hour be stronger." The best course, 
in his opinion, would be to take the whole fleet at once into 
the Baltic against Russia, as a "home stroke," which if suc- 
cessful would bring down the coalition like a house of cards. 
If the Danes must first be dealt with, he proposed, instead of 
a direct attack, which would be "taking the bull by the horns," 
an attack from the rear. In order to do so, the fleet could get 
beyond the city either by passing through the Great Belt south 
of Zealand, or directly through the Sound. Another result- 
ant advantage, in case the five Swedish sail of the line or the 
14 Russian ships at Revel should take the offensive, would 
be that of central position, between the enemy divisions. 

"Supposing us through the Belt," the letter concludes, "with 
the wind northwesterly, would it not be possible to either go 
with the fleet or detach ten Ships of three and two decks, with 
one Bomb and two Fireships, to Revel, to destroy the Russian 
squadron at that place? I do not see the great risk of such a 
detachment, and with the remainder to attempt the business 
at Copenhagen. The measure may be thought bold, but I am 
of the opinion that the boldest measures are the safest; and 
our Country demands a most vigorous assertion of her force, 
directed with judgment." 

Here was a striking plan of aggressive warfare, aimed 
at the heart of the coalition. The proposal to leave part of 
the fleet at Copenhagen was indeed a dangerous compromise, 
involving divided forces and threatened communications, but 
was perhaps justified by the known inefficiency of the Rus- 
sians and the fact that the Danes were actually fought and 
defeated with a force no greater than the plan provided. In 
the end the more conservative course was adopted of settling 
with Denmark first. Keeping well to the eastern shore, the 
fleet on March 30 passed into the Sound without injury 



256 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

from the fire of the Kronenburg forts at its entrance, and 
anchored that evening near Copenhagen. 

Three days later, on April 2, 1801, the attack was made as 
planned, from the southward end of the Middle Ground. Nel- 
son in the Elephant commanded the fighting squadron, which 
consisited of seven 74's, three 64' s and two of 50 guns, with 18 
bomb vessels, sloops, and fireships. The rest of the ships, 
under Parker, were anchored at the other end of the shoal and 
5 miles north of the city ; it seems they were to have cooperated, 
but the south wind which Nelson needed made attack impos- 
sible for them. Against the Danish total of 696 guns on the 
ships and Trekroner fortification, Nelson's squadron had 
1 014, but three of his main units grounded during the ap- 
proach and were of little service. There was no effort at 
concentration, the British when in position engaging the whole 
southern part of the Danish line. "Here," in the words of 
Nelson's later description, "was no maneuvering; it was down- 
right fighting" — a hotly contested action against ships and 
shore batteries lasting from 10 a. m., when the Elephant led 
into position on the bow of Commodore Fisher's flagship 
Dannebroge, until about one. 

In the midst of the engagement, as Nelson restlessly paced 
the quarterdeck, he caught sight of the signal "Leave off 
action" flown from Sir Hyde's flagship. Instead of trans- 
mitting the signal to the vessels under him, Nelson kept his 
own for "Close action" hoisted. Colonel Stewart, who was on 
board at the time, continues the story as follows: "He also 
observed, I believe to Captain Foley, 'You know, Foley, I 
have only one eye — I have a right to be blind sometimes' ; and 
then with an archness peculiar to his character, putting the 
glass to his blind eye, he exclaimed, 'Ireally do not see the 
signal.' " It was obeyed, however, by the light vessels under 
Captain Riou attacking the Trekroner battery, who were suf- 
fering severely, and who could also more easily effect a 
retreat. 

Shortly afterward the Danish fire began to slacken and 
several of the floating batteries surrendered, though before 
they could be taken they were frequently remanned by fresh 



THE RISE OF NELSON 



257 





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258 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

forces from the shore. Enough had been accomplished; and 
to end a difficult situation — if not to extricate himself from 
it — Nelson sent the following summons addressed "To the 
brothers of Englishmen, the Danes" : "Lord Nelson has orders 
to spare Denmark when no longer resisting; if the firing is 
continued on the part of Denmark, Lord Nelson will be obliged 
to set fire to the floating batteries he has taken, without hav- 
ing the power of saving the brave Danes who have defended 
them." 

A truce followed, during which Nelson removed his ships. 
Next day he went ashore to open negotiations, while at the 
same time he brought bomb vessels into position to bombard 
the city. The cessation of hostilities was the more readily 
agreed to by the Danes owing to the fact that on the night be- 
fore the battle they had received news, which they still kept 
concealed from the British, of the assassination of the Czar 
Paul. His successor, they knew, would be forced to adopt a 
policy more favorable to the true interests of Russian trade. 
The league in fact was on the verge of collapse. A fourteen 
weeks' armistice was signed with Denmark. On April 12 
the fleet moved into the Baltic, and on May 5, Nelson having 
succeeded Parker in command, it went on to Revel, whence 
the Russian squadron had escaped through the ice to Kron- 
stadt ten days before. On June 17 a convention was signed 
with Russia and later accepted by the other northern states, 
by which Great Britain conceded that neutrals might engage 
in trade from one enemy port to another, with the important 
exception of colonial ports, and that naval stores should not 
be contraband; whereas Russia agreed that enemy goods un- 
der certain conditions might be seized in neutral ships, and 
that vessels under naval escort might be searched by ships-of- 
war. In the meantime, Nelson, realizing that active opera- 
tions were over with, resigned his command. 

In the opinion of the French naval critic Graviere, the cam- 
paign thus ended constitutes in the eyes of seamen Nelson's best 
title to fame — "son plus beau litre de gloire." x Certainly it 
called forth the most varied talents — grasp of the political and 

1 Guerres Mabitimes, Vol. II, p. 43. 



THE RISE OF NELSON 259 

strategical situation; tact and force of personality in dealing 
with an inert commander in chief; energy in overcoming not 
only military obstacles but the doubts and scruples of fellow 
officers ; aggressiveness in battle ; and skill in negotiations. In 
view of the Czar's murder — of which the British Government 
would seem to have had an inkling beforehand — it may be 
thought that less strenuous methods would have served. On 
the contrary, however, hundreds of British merchant vessels 
had been seized in northern ports, trade had been stopped, 
and the nation was threatened with a dangerous increment 
to her foes. Furthermore, after a brief interval of peace, 
Great Britain had to face ten years more of desperate war- 
fare, during which nothing served her better than that at 
Copenhagen the northern neutrals had had a sharp taste of 
British naval power. Force was needed. That it was em- 
ployed economically is shown by the fact that, when a renewal 
of peace between France and Russia in 1807 again threatened 
a northern confederation, Nelson's accomplishment with 12 
ships was duplicated, but this time with 25 of the line, 40 
frigates, 27,000 troops, the bombardment of Copenhagen, and 
a regular land campaign. 

Upon Nelson's return to England, popular clamor prac- 
tically forced his appointment to command the Channel defense 
flotilla against the French armies which were now once more 
concentrated on the northern coast. This service lasted for 
only a brief period until the signing of peace preliminaries in 
October, 1801. 

During the eight years of hostilities thus ended Great Britain, 
it is true, had been fighting largely on the defensive, but on 
a line of defense carried to the enemy's sea frontiers and com- 
parable to siege lines about a city or fortress, which, when 
once established, thrust upon the enemy the problem of break- 
ing through. The efforts of France to pierce this barrier, 
exerted in various directions and by various means, were, as 
we have seen, defeated by naval engagements, which insured 
to England the control of the sea. During this period, France 
lost altogether 55 ships-of-the-line, Holland 18, Spain 10, and 
Denmark 2, a total of 85, of which at least 50 were cap 1 - 



260 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

tured by the enemy. Great Britain lost 20, but only 5 by 
capture. The British battle fleet at the close of hostilities 
had increased to 189 capital ships; that of France had shrunk 
to 45. 

For purposes of commerce warfare the French navy had 
suffered the withdrawal of many of its smaller fighting vessels 
and large numbers of its best seamen, attracted into privateer- 
ing by the better promise of profit and adventure. As a result 
of this warfare, about 3500 British merchantmen were de- 
stroyed, an average of 500 a year, representing an annual 
loss of 2^ per cent the total ships of British register. But in 
the meantime the French merchant marine and commerce had 
been literally swept off the seas. In 1799 the Directory ad- 
mitted there was "not a single merchant ship on the seas 
carrying the French flag." French imports from Asia, Africa, 
and America in 1800 amounted to only $300,000, and ex- 
ports to $56,000, whereas England's total export and im- 
port trade had nearly doubled, from 44^ million pounds sterl- 
ing in 1792 to nearly 78 million in 1800. It is true that, 
owing to the exigencies of war, the amount of British ship- 
ping employed in this trade actually fell off slightly, and that 
of neutrals increased from 13 to 34%. But the profits went 
chiefly to British merchants. England had become the great 
storehouse and carrier for the Continent, "Commerce," in 
the phrase engraved on the elder Pitt's monument, "being 
united with and made to flourish by war." x 

REFERENCES 
See end of Chapter XIII, page 285. 

1 Figures on naval losses from Graviere, Guerres Maritimes, Vol. II, 
ch. VII, and on commerce, from Mahan, French Revolution and Empire, 
Vol. II, ch. XVII. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE NAPOLEONIC WAR [Concluded] : TRAFAL- 
GAR AND AFTER 

The peace finally ratified at Amiens in March, 1802, failed 
to accomplish any of the purposes for which England had en- 
tered the war. France not only maintained her frontiers on 
the Scheldt and the Rhine, but still exercised a predominant 
influence in Holland and western Italy, and excluded British 
trade from territories under her control. Until French troops 
were withdrawn from Holland, as called for by the treaty, 
England refused to evacuate Malta. Bonaparte, who wished 
further breathing space to build up the French navy, tried 
vainly to postpone hostilities by threatening to invade England 
and exclude her from all continental markets. "It will be 
England," he declared, "that forces us to conquer Europe." 
The war reopened in May of 1803. 

With no immediate danger on the Continent and with all 
the resources of a regenerated France at his command, Bona- 
parte now undertook the project of a descent upon England 
on such a scale as never before. Hazardous as he always 
realized the operation to be — it was a thousand to one chance, 
he told the British envoys, that he and his army would end 
at the bottom of the sea — he was definitely committed to it 
by his own threats and by the expectation of France that he 
would now annihilate her hereditary foe. 

Napoleon's Plan of Invasion 

An army of 130,000 men, with 400 guns and 20 days' 
supplies, was to embark from four ports close to Boulogne 
as a center, and cross the 36 miles of Channel to a favorable 

261 



262 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

stretch of coast between Dover and Hastings, distant from 
London some 70 miles. The transport flotilla, as finally 
planned, was to consist of 2000 or more small flat-bottomed 
sailing vessels with auxiliary oar propulsion — chaloupes and 
bateaux canonnieres, from 60 to 80 feet over all, not over 
8 feet in draft, with from two to four guns and a capacity for 
100 to 150 men. Large open boats (peniches) were also to 
be used, and all available coast craft for transport of horses 
and supplies. Shipyards from the Scheldt to the Gironde 
were soon busy building the special flotilla, and as fast as 
they were finished they skirted the shores to the points of 
concentration under protection of coast batteries. Extensive 
harbor and defense works were undertaken at Boulogne and 
neighboring ports, and the 120 miles from the Scheldt to the 
Somme was soon bristling with artillery, in General Marmont's 
phrase, "a coast of iron and bronze." 

The impression was spread abroad that the crossing was 
to be effected by stealth, in calm, fog, or the darkness of a 
long winter night, without the protection of a fleet. Almost 
from the first, however, Bonaparte seems to have had no such 
intention. The armament of the flotilla itself proved of slight 
value, and he was resolved to take no uncalled-for risks, on 
an unfamiliar element, with 100,000 men. An essential con- 
dition, which greatly complicated the whole undertaking, be- 
came the concentration of naval forces in the Channel suffi- 
cient to secure temporary control. "Let us be masters of the 
Strait for 6 hours," Napoleon wrote to Latouche Treville in 
command of the Toulon fleet, "and we shall be masters of the 
world." In less rhetorical moments he extended the necessary 
period to from two to fifteen days. 

Up to the spring of 1804 neither army nor flotilla was 
fully ready, and thereafter the crossing was always definitely 
conditioned upon a naval concentration. But the whole plan 
called for swift execution. As time lapsed, difficulties multi- 
plied. Harbors silted up, transports were wrecked by storms, 
British defense measures on land and sea grew more formida- 
ble, the Continental situation became more threatening. The 
Boulogne army thus became more and more — what Napoleon 



TRAFALGAR AND AFTER 263 

perhaps falsely declared later it had always been — an army 
concentrated against Austria. To get a fleet into the Channel 
without a battle was almost impossible, and once in, its posi- 
tion would be dangerous in the extreme. Towards the end, 
in the opinion of the French student Colonel Desbriere, Na- 
poleon's chief motive in pressing for fleet cooperation was the 
belief that it would lead to a decisive naval action which, 
though a defeat, would shift from his own head the odium of 
failure. 

Whether this theory is fully accepted or not, the fact re- 
mains that the only sure way of conquering England was by 
a naval contest. Her first and main defense was the British 
fleet, which, spread out to the limits of safety to watch French 
ships wherever harbored, guarded not only against a con- 
centration in the Channel, but against incursions into other 
fields. The immediate defense of the coasts was intrusted to 
flotillas of armed boats, over 700 in all, distributed along 
the coast from Leith south-about to Glasgow, with 100 on 
the coast of Ireland. Naval men looked upon these as of 
slight value, a concession, according to Earl St. Vincent, to 
"the old women in and out" (of both sexes) at home. The 
distribution of the main battle squadrons varied, but in March, 
1805, at the opening of the Trafalgar campaign they were 
stationed as follows: Boulogne and the Dutch forces were 
watched by Admiral Keith with 11 of the line and 150 smaller 
units scattered from the Texel to the Channel Islands. The 
21 French ships under Ganteaume at Brest, the strategic cen- 
ter, were closely blockaded by Cornwallis, whose force, by 
Admiralty orders, was not to fall below 18 of the line. A 
small squadron had been watching Missiessy's 5 ships at 
Rochefort and upon his escape in January had followed him 
to the West Indies. The 5 French and 10 Spanish at Ferrol 
and the 6 or more ready for sea at Cadiz were held in check 
by forces barely adequate. In the Gulf of Lyons Nelson with 
13 ships had since May, 1803, stood outside the distant but 
dangerous station of Toulon. Owing to the remoteness from 
bases, a close and constant blockade was here impossible; 



264. A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 









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TRAFALGAR AND AFTER 265 

moreover, it was the policy to let the enemy get out in the 
hope of bringing him to action at sea. 

To effect a concentration in the Channel in the face of these 
obstacles was the final aim of all Napoleon's varied naval com- 
binations of 1804 and 1805 — combinations which impress one 
with the truth of Graviere's criticism that the Emperor lacked 
"le sentiment exact des difficultes de la marine," and especially, 
one should perhaps add, de la marine frangaise. The first plan, 
the simplest and, therefore, most promising, was that Latouche 
Treville with the Toulon fleet should evade Nelson and, after 
releasing ships on the way, enter the Channel with 16 of the 
line, while Cornwallis was kept occupied by Ganteaume. This 
was upset by the death of Latouche, France's ablest and most 
energetic admiral, in August of 1804, and by the accession, 
two months later, of Spain and the Spanish navy to the French 
cause. After many misgivings Napoleon chose Villeneuve 
to succeed at Toulon. Skilled in his profession, honest, and 
devoted, he was fatally lacking in self-confidence and energy 
to conquer difficulties. "It is sad," wrote an officer in the 
fleet, "to see that force which under Latouche was full of ac- 
tivity, now without faith in either their leader or themselves." 

The final plan, though still subject to modifications, was for 
a concentration on a larger scale in the West Indies. Vil- 
leneuve was to go thither, picking up the Cadiz ships on the 
way, join the Roche fort squadron if it were still there, and 
wait 40 days for the Brest fleet. Upon its arrival the entire 
force of 40 ships was to move swiftly back to the Channel. It 
was assumed that the British squadrons, in alarm for the 
colonies, would in the meantime be scattered in pursuit. 

The Pursuit of Villeneuve 

Villeneuve put to sea in a rising gale on January 17, 1805, 
but was soon back in port with damaged ships, the only effect 
being to send Nelson clear to Egypt in search of him. A suc- 
cessful start was made on March 30. Refusing to wait for 5 
Spanish vessels at Carthagena, Villeneuve with 1 1 sail reached 
Cadiz on April 9, picked up one French vessel and two Spanish 



266 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

under Admiral Gravina, and leaving 4 more to follow was 
off safely on the same night for the West Indies. 

From Gibraltar to the Admiralty in London, Villeneuve's 
appearance in the Atlantic created a profound stir. His de- 
parture from Cadiz was known, but not whither he had gone. 
The five ships on the Cadiz blockade fell back at once to the 
Channel. A fast frigate from Gibraltar carried the warning 
to Calder off Ferrol and to the Brest blockade, whence it 
reached London on April 25. A convoy for Malta and Sicily 
with 6000 troops under Gen. Craig— a pledge which Russia 
called for before sending her own forces to southern Italy — 
was already a week on its way and might fall an easy victim. 
In consequence of an upheaval at the Admiralty, Lord Barham, 
a former naval officer now nearly 80 years of age, had just 
begun his memorable 9 months' administration as First Lord 
of the Admiralty and director of the naval war. Immediately 
a whole series of orders went out to the fleets to insure the 
safety of the troop ships, the maintenance of the Ferrol block- 
ade, an eventual strengthening of forces outside the Channel, 
and the safety of the Antilles in case Villeneuve had gone there. 

Where was Nelson? His scout frigates by bad judgment 
had lost Villeneuve on the night of March 31 east of Minorca, 
with no clue to his future course. Nelson took station between 
Sardinia and the African coast, resolved not to move till he 
"knew something positive." In the absence of information, 
the safety of Naples, Sicily, and Egypt was perhaps not merely 
an obsession on his part, but a proper professional concern; 
but it is strange that no inkling should have reached him 
from the Admiralty or elsewhere that a western movement 
from Toulon was the only one Napoleon now had in mind. 
It was April 18 before he received further news of the enemy, 
and not until May 5 was he able to get up to and through 
the Straits against steady head winds ; even then he could not, 
as he said, "run to the West Indies without something be- 
yond mere surmise." Definite reports from Cadiz that the 
enemy had gone thither reached him through an Admiral 
Campbell in the Portuguese service, and were confirmed by 
the fact that they had been seen nowhere to northward. On 



TRAFALGAR AND AFTER 267 

the 12th, leaving the Royal Sovereign (ioo) to strengthen the 
escort of Craig's convoy, which had now appeared, he set 
out westward with 10 ships in pursuit of the enemy's 18. 

He reached Barbados on June 4, only 21 days after Vil- 
leneuve's arrival at Martinique. The latter had found that 
the Rochefort squadron — as a result of faulty transmission 
of Napoleon's innumerable orders — was already back in Eu- 
rope, and that the Brest squadron had not come. In fact, held 
tight in the grip of Cornwallis, it was destined never to leave 
port. But a reenforcement of 2 ships had reached Villeneuve 
with orders to wait 35 days longer and in the meantime to 
harry the British colonies. Disgruntled and despondent, he 
had scarcely got troops aboard and started north on this 
mission when he learned that Nelson was hot on his trail. 
The troops were hastily thrown into frigates to protect the 
French colonies. Without other provision for their safety, 
and in disregard of orders, Villeneuve at once turned back 
for Europe, hoping the Emperor's schemes would still be 
set forward by his joining the ships at Ferrol. 

Nelson followed four days later, on June 13, steering for 
his old post in the Mediterranean, but at the same time 
despatching the fast brig Curieux to England with news of 
the French fleet's return. This vessel by great good fortune 
sighted Villeneuve in mid-ocean, inferred from his northerly 
position that he was bound for Ferrol, and reached Ports- 
mouth on July 8. Barham at the Admiralty got the news the 
next morning, angry that he had not been routed out of bed 
on the arrival of the captain the night before. By 9 o'clock 
the same morning, orders were off to Calder on the Ferrol 
station in time so that on the 22 d of July he encountered the 
enemy, still plowing slowly eastward, some 300 miles west 
of Cape Finisterre. 

As a result of admirable communication work and swift 
administrative action the critic of Nelson at Cape St. Vin- 
cent now had a chance to rob the latter of his last victory 
and end the campaign then and there. His forces were ade- 
quate. Though he had only 14 ships to 20, his four three- 
deckers, according to the estimates of the time, were each worth 



268 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 




TRAFALGAR AND AFTER 269 

two of the enemy 74's, and on the other hand, the 6 
Spanish ships with Villeneuve could hardly be counted for 
more than three. In the ensuing action, fought in foggy 
weather, two of the Spanish were captured and one of Calder's 
three-deckers was so injured that it had to be detached. The 
two fleets remained in contact for three days following, but 
neither took the aggressive. In a subsequent court martial 
Calder was reprimanded for "not having done his utmost to 
renew the said engagement and destroy every ship of the 
enemy." 

On July 2.J the Allied fleet staggered into Vigo, and a week 
later, after dropping three ships and 1200 sick men, it moved 
around to Corunna and Ferrol. Instead of being shaken down 
and strengthened by the long cruise, it was, according to the 
commander's plaintive letters, in worse plight than when it 
left Toulon. Nevertheless, ten days later he was ready to 
leave port, with 29 units, 14 of them raw vessels from Ferrol, 
and 11 of them Spanish. If, as Napoleon said, France was not 
going to give up having a navy, something might still be done. 
His orders to Villeneuve were to proceed to Brest and thence 
to Boulogne. "I count," he ended, "on your zeal in my serv- 
ice, your love of your country, and your hatred of that nation 
which has oppressed us for 40 generations, and which a little 
preseverance on your part will now cause to reenter forever the 
ranks of petty powers." x 

Such were Villeneuve's instructions, the wisdom or sin- 
cerity of which it was scarcely his privilege to question (though 
in may be ours) . In passing judgment on his failure to execute 
them it should be remembered that two months later, to avoid 
the personal disgrace of being superseded, he took his fleet out 
to more certain disaster than that which it now faced in strik- 
ing northward from Corunna. "Un poltron du tete et non de 
la coour" 2 the French Admiral was handicapped throughout 
by a paralyzing sense of the things he could not do. 

If he had sailed northward he would have found the British 
fleet divided. Nelson, it is true, after returning to Cadiz had 

1 Orders of 26 July, Desbriere, Projets, Vol. V, p. 672. 
3 Graviere II, 136. 



270 'A. HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

fallen back from Gibraltar to the Channel, where he left his 
eleven ships with the Brest squadron in remarkable condition 
after more than two years at sea. Calder had also joined, 
bringing - Cornwallis' total strength to 39. These stood be- 
tween the 21 French at Brest and the 29 at Ferrol. But on 
August 16 Cornwallis divided his forces, keeping 18 (includ- 
ing 10 three-deckers) and sending Calder back to the Span- 
ish coast with the rest. Napoleon called this a disgraceful 
blunder (insigne betise), and Mahan adds, "This censure was 
just." Sir Julian Corbett says it was a "master stroke . . . 
in all the campaign there is no movement — not even Nelson's 
chase of Villeneuve — that breathes more deeply the true spirit 
of war." According to Napoleon, Villeneuve might have 
"played prisoners' base with Calder's squadron and fallen 
upon Cornwallis, or with his 30 of the line have beaten Calder's 
20 and obtained a decisive superiority." 

So perhaps a Napoleonic admiral. Villeneuve left Ferrol 
on August 13 and sailed northwest on a heavy northeast wind 
till the 15th. Then, his fixed purpose merely strengthened 
by false news from a Danish merchantman of 25 British in 
the vicinity, he turned before the wind for Cadiz. As soon 
as he was safely inside, the British blockaders again closed 
around the port. 

The Battle of Trafalgar 

After twenty-five days in England, Nelson took command 
off Cadiz on September 28, eager for a final blow that would 
free England for aggressive war. There was talk of using 
bomb vessels, Congreve's rockets, and Francis's (Robert Ful- 
ton's) torpedoes to destroy the enemy in harbor, but it soon 
became known that Villeneuve would be forced to put to sea. 
On October 9, Nelson issued the famous Memorandum, or 
battle plan, embodying what he called "the Nelson touch," and 
received by his captains with an enthusiasm which the inspira- 
tion of the famous leader no doubt partly explains. This plan, 
which had been formulating itself in Nelson's mind as far 
back as the pursuit of the French fleet to the West Indies, 
may be regarded as the product of his ripest experience and 



TRAFALGAR AND AFTER 271 

genius; the praise is perhaps not extravagant that "it seems 
to gather up and coordinate every tactical principle that has 
ever proved effective." x 

Though the full text of the Memorandum will repay careful 
study, its leading principles may be sufficiently indicated by 
summary Assuming 40 British ships to 46 of the enemy 




NELSON S VICTORY 
Built in 1765. 2162 tons. 



(the proportions though not the numbers of the actual en- 
gagement), it provides first that "the order of sailing is to 
be the order of battle, placing the fleet in two lines of 16 
ships each, with an advanced squadron of 8 of the fastest 
sailing two-decked ships." This made for speed and ease in 
maneuvering, and was based on the expressed belief that so 
many units could not be formed and controlled in the old- 
fashioned single line without fatal loss of time. The ships 

^orbett, The Campaign of Trafalgar, p. 349. 



272 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

would now come into action practically in cruising formation, 
which was commonly in two columns. The only noteworthy 
change contemplated was that the flagships of the first and 
second in command should shift from first to third place in 
their respective columns, and even this change was not car- 
ried out. Perhaps because the total force was smaller than 
anticipated, the advance squadron was merged with the two 
main divisions on the night before the battle, and need not be 
further regarded. Collingwood, the second in command, was 
given freedom of initiative by the provision that "after my 
intentions are made known to him he will have entire direc- 
tion of his line." 

The plan next provides, first for attack from to leeward, 
and second for attack from to windward. In either case, 
Collingwood's division was to bring a superior force to bear 
on 12 ships of the enemy rear, while Nelson would "cut two, 
three or four ships ahead of their center so far as to ensure 
getting at their commander in chief." "Something must be 
left to chance . . . but I look with confidence to a victory 
before the van of the enemy can succor their rear." And 
further, "no captain can do very wrong if he places his ship 
alongside that of an enemy." 

Of the attack from the windward a very rough diagram is 
given, thus : 



But aside from this diagram, the lines of which are not 
precisely straight or parallel in the original, and which can 
hardly be reconciled with the instructions in the text, there is 
no clear indication that the attack from the windward (as in 
the actual battle) was to be delivered in line abreast. What 
the text says is : "The divisions of the British fleet will be 
brought nearly within gunshot of the enemy's center. The 
signal will most probably then be given for the lee line to 
bear up together, to set all their sails, even steering sails, in 



TRAFALGAR AND AFTER 273 

order to get as quickly as possible to the enemy's line and to 
cut through." Thus, if we assume a convergent approach in' 
column, there was to be no slow deployment of the rear or 
leeward division into line abreast to make the attack of all its 
ships simultaneous; rather, in the words of a captain describ- 
ing what really happened, they were simply to "scramble into 
action" at best speed. Nor is there any suggestion of a pre- 
liminary shift from line ahead in the case of Nelson's division. 
Though endless controversy has raged over the point, the 
prescribed approach seems to have been followed fairly closely 
in the battle. 

The concentration upon the rear was not new; in fact, it 
had become almost conventional, and was fully anticipated by 
the enemy. More originality lay in the manner of "contain- 
ing" the center and van. For this purpose, in the first place, 
the approach was to be at utmost speed, not under "battle 
canvas" but with all sail spread. In the second place, the ad- 
vance of Nelson's division in column, led by the flagship, left- 
its precise objective not fully disclosed to the enemy until the 
last moment, and open to change as advantage offered. It 
could and did threaten the van, and was finally directed upon 
the center when Villeneuve's presence there was revealed. 
Finally, the very serious danger of enemy concentration upon 
the head of the column was mitigated not only by the speed 
of the approach, but by the concentration there of three heavy 
three-deckers. The plan in general had in view a particular 
enemy, superior in numbers but weak in gunnery, slow in ma- 
neuver, and likely to avoid decisive action. It aimed pri- 
marily at rapidity of movement, but combined also the merits 
of concentration, simplicity, flexibility, and surprise. 

In this discussion of the scheme of the battle, around which 
interest chiefly centers, the actual events of the engagement 
have been in some measure anticipated, and may now be told 
more briefly. Driven to desperation by the goadings of Na- 
poleon and the news that Admiral Rosily was approaching to 
supersede him, Villeneuve at last resolved to put to sea. "The 
intention of His Majesty," so the Minister of Marine had 
written, "is to seek in the ranks, wherever they may be found, 



274 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

officers best suited for superior command, requiring above all 
a noble ambition, love of glory, decision of character, and un- 
bounded courage. His Majesty wishes to destroy that cir- 
cumspection which is the reproach of the navy; that defensive 
system which paralyzes our fleet and doubles the enemy's. 
He counts the loss of vessels nothing if lost with honor; he 
does not wish his fleet blockaded by an enemy inferior in 
strength; and if that is the situation at Cadiz he advises and 
orders you to attack." 

The Allied fleet worked out of Cadiz on the 19th of Octo- 
ber and on the 20th tacked southward under squally westerly 
winds. On the 21st, the day of the battle, the wind was still 
from the west, light and flawy, with a heavy swell and signs 
of approaching storm. At dawn the two fleets were visible to 
each other, Villeneuve about 9 miles northeast and to leeward 
of the British and standing southward from Cape Trafalgar. 
The French Admiral had formed his main battle line of 21 
ships, French and Spanish intermingled, with the Samtisima 
Trinidad (128) in the center and his flagship Bucentaure next ; 
the remaining 12 under the Spanish Admiral Gravina consti- 
tuted a separate squadron stationed to windward to counter 
an enemy concentration, which was especially expected upon 
the rear. 

As the British advance already appeared to threaten this 
end of their line, the Allied fleet wore together about 9 o'clock, 
thus reversing their order, shifting their course northward, 
and opening Cadiz as a refuge. The maneuver, not completed 
until an hour later, left their line bowed in at the center, with 
a number of ships slightly to leeward, while Gravina's squad- 
ron mingled with and prolonged the rear in the new order. 

The change, though it aroused Nelson's fear lest his quarry 
should escape, facilitated his attack as planned, by exposing 
the enemy rear to Collingwood's division. As rapidly as the 
light airs permitted, the two British columns bore down, Nelson 
in the Victory (100) leading the windward division of 12 
ships, closely followed by the heavy Neptune and Temeraire, 
while Collingwood in the freshly coppered and refitted Royal 
Sovereign set a sharp pace for the 15 sail to leeward. Of the 



TRAFALGAR AND AFTER 



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Position of ships about noon, when Royal Sovereign opened fire. 

(From plan by Capt. T. H. Tizard, R.N., British Admiralty Report, 1913.) 



276 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

forty ships Nelson had once counted on, some had not come 
from England, and a half dozen others were inside the straits 
for water. While the enemy were changing course, Colling- 
wood had signaled his division to shift into a line of bearing, 
an order which, though rendered almost ineffective by his fail- 
ure to slow down, served to throw the column off slightly and 
bring it more nearly parallel to the enemy rear. (See plan.) 
Both commanders clung to the lead and pushed ahead as if 
racing into the fray, thus effectually preventing deployment 
and leaving trailers far behind. Nelson went so far as to try 
to jockey his old friend out of first place by ordering the Mars 
to pass him, but Collingwood set his studding sails and kept 
his lead. Possibly it was then he made the remark that he 
wished Nelson would make no more signals, as they all knew 
what they had to do, rather than after Nelson's famous final 
message : "England expects that every man will do his duty." 

Nelson, uncertain of Villeneuve's place in the line and 
anxious to prevent escape northward, steered for a gap ahead 
of the Santisima Trinidad, as if to threaten the van. But at 
12 :oo noon, as the first shots were fired at the Royal Sover- 
eign, flags were broken from all ships, and Villeneuve's location 
revealed. Swinging to southward under heavy fire, the Victory 
passed under the stern of the Bucentaure and then crashed into 
the Redoubtable, which had pushed close up to the flagship. 
The relative effectiveness of the gunnery in the two fleets is 
suggested by the fact that the Victory while coming in under 
the enemy's concentrated fire had only 50 killed and wounded, 
whereas the raking broadside she finally poured into the Bucen- 
taure' 's stern is said to have swept down 400 men. Almost 
simultaneously with the leader, the Temeraire and Neptune 
plunged into the line, the former closing with the Bucentaure 
and the latter with the Santisima Trinidad ahead. Other 
ships soon thrust into the terrific artillery combat which cen- 
tered around the leaders in a confused mingling of friend and 
foe. 

At about 12:10, nearly half an hour before the Victory 
penetrated the Allied line, the Royal Sovereign brought up on 
the leeward side of the Santa Ana, flagship of the Spanish 



TRAFALGAR AND AFTER 277 

Admiral Alava, after raking both her and the Fougueux astern. 
The Santa Ana was thirteenth in the actual line, but, as 
Collingwood knew, there were 16, counting those to< leeward, 
among the ships he had thus cut off for his division to subdue. 
As a combined effect of the light breeze and the manner of at- 
tack, it was an hour or more before the action was made gen- 
eral by the advent of British ships in the rear. All these suf- 
fered as they closed, but far less than those near the head of 
the line. Of the total British casualties fully a third fell upon 
the four leading ships — Victory, Temeraire, Royal Sovereign 
and Belleisle. 

Not until about three o'clock were the shattered but victori- 
ous British in the center threatened by the return of the ten 
ships in the Allied van. Culpably slow, however hindered by 
lack of wind, several of these joined stragglers from Gravina's 
division to leeward ; the Intrepide, under her brave skipper 
Infernet, set an example all might well have followed by steer- 
ing straight for the Bucentaure, and surrendered only to over- 
whelming odds; four others under Rear Admiral Dumanoir 
skirted to windward and escaped with the loss of one of their 
number, cut off by two British late-comers, Spartiate and Mino- 
taur. 

"Partial firing continued until 4 130, when a victory having 
been reported to the Right Honorable Lord Viscount Nelson, 
he died of his wound." So reads the Victory's log. The flag- 
ship had been in deadly grapple with the Redoutable, whose 
complement, like that of many another French and Spanish 
ship in the action, showed that the decadence of their navies 
was not due to lack of fighting spirit in the rank and file. 
Nelson was mortally wounded by a musket shot from the 
mizzen-top soon after the ships closed. In his hour of supreme 
achievement death came not ungraciously, giving final assur- 
ance of the glory which no man ever faced death more eagerly 
to win. 

Of the Allied fleet, four fled with Dumanoir, but were 
later engaged and captured by a British squadron near 
Corunna. Eleven badly battered survivors escaped into Cadiz. 
Of the 18 captured, 11 were wrecked or destroyed in the gales 



278 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



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TRAFALGAR, ABOUT 12 130 

From plan attached to report of Capt. Prigny, Villeneuve's Chief of Staff (Destriere, 
Trafalgar, App. p. 128.) 



that swept the coast for several days after the battle; three 
were recaptured or turned back to their crews by the prize- 
masters, and only four eventually reached Gibraltar. 

The Trafalgar victory did not indeed reduce France to 
terms, and it thus illustrates the limitations of naval power 



TRAFALGAR AND AFTER 279 

against an enemy not primarily dependent upon the sea. But 
it freed England from further threat of invasion, clinched her 
naval predominance, and opened to her the prospect of taking 
a more aggressive part in the land war. Even this prospect 
was soon temporarily thrust into the background. On the 
very day of Trafalgar Napoleon's bulletins announced the sur- 
render of 60,000 Austrians at Ulm, and the Battle of Auster- 
litz a month later crushed the Third Coalition. The small 
British contingents in Germany and southern Italy hastened 
back to their transports. It was only later, when France was 
approaching exhaustion, that British forces in the Spanish 
peninsula and elsewhere took a conspicuous part in the Con- 
tinental war. 

The Continental System 

England's real offensive strength lay not in her armies 
but in her grip on Europe's intercourse with the rest of the 
world. And on the other hand, the only blow that Napoleon 
could still strike at his chief enemy was to shut her from the 
markets of Europe 1 — to "defeat the sea by the land." This 
was the aim of his Continental System. It meant a test of en- 
durance — whether he could force France and the rest of Eu- 
rope to undergo the tremendous strain of commercial isolation 
for a sufficient period to reduce England to ruin. 

The Continental System came into being with Napoleon's 
famous Berlin Decree of November, 1806, which, declaring a 
"paper" blockade of the British Isles, put all trade with Eng- 
land under the ban. Under this decree and later supplementary 
measures, goods of British origin, whatever their subsequent 
ownership, were confiscated or destroyed wherever French 
agents could lay hands on them; and neutral vessels were 
seized and condemned for entering British ports, accepting 
British convoy, or even submitting to British search. 

England's chief retaliatory measure was the Orders in Coun- 
cil of November, 1807. Her object in these orders and later 
modifications was not to cut off trade with the Continent, but 
to control it to her own profit and the injury of the enemy — 
in short, "no trade except through England." The orders 



280 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

aimed to compel the aid of neutrals by excluding neutral ships 
from the Continent unless they should first enter British ports, 
pay British dues, and (as would be an inevitable consequence) 
give covert assistance in carrying on British trade. 

The Continental System reached its greatest efficiency during 
the apogee of Napoleon's power in 1809 and 1810. To check 
forbidden traffic, which continued on an enormous scale, he 
annexed Holland to his empire, and threw a triple cordon of 
French troops along Germany's sea frontier. As a result, in 
the critical year of 181 1 goods piled up in British warehouses, 
factories closed, bankruptcies doubled, and her financial sys- 
tem tottered. 1 But to bar the tide of commerce at every 
port from Trieste to Riga was like trying to stem the sea. At 
each leak in the barrier, sugar, coffee, and British manufac- 
tures poured in, and were paid for at triple or tenfold prices, 
not in exports, but in coin. Malta, the Channel Islands, and 
Heligoland (seized by England from Denmark in 1807) be- 
came centers of smuggling. The beginning of the end came 
when the Czar, tired of French dictation and a policy ruinous' 
to his country, opened his ports, first to colonial products (De- 
cember, 181 o), and a year later to all British wares. Six hun- 
dred vessels, brought under British convoy into the Baltic, 
docked at Libau, and caravans of wagons filled the roads lead- 
ing east and south. 

In June of 1812 Napoleon gathered his "army of twenty 
nations" for the fatal Russian campaign. Now that they had 
served their purpose, England on June 23 revoked her Orders 
in Council. The Continental System had failed. 

The War of 18 12 

In the same month, on June 18, the United States declared 
war on Great Britain. Up to 1807 her commerce and shipping, 
in the words of President Monroe, had "flourished beyond 

1 In spite of this crisis, British trade showed progressive increase in 
each half decade from 1800 to 1815, and did not fall off again until the 
five years after the war. The figures (in millions of pounds sterling) 
follow: 1801-05, 61 million; 1806-10, 67 million; 1811-15, 74 million; 
1816-20, 60 million. — Day, History of Commerce, p. 355. 



TRAFALGAR AND AFTER 281 

example," as shown by the single fact that her re-export trade 
(in West Indies products) was greater in that year than ever 
again until 191 5. 1 Later they had suffered from the coer- 
cion of both belligerents, and from her own futile counter- 
measures of embargo and non-intercourse. Her final declara- 
tion came tardily, if not indeed unwisely as a matter of prac- 
tical policy, however abundantly justified by England's com- 
mercial restrictions and her seizure of American as well as 
British seamen on American ships. An additional motive, 
which had decisive weight with the dominant western faction 
in Congress, was the hope of gaining Canada or at least ex- 
tending the northern frontier. 

A subordinate episode in the world conflict, the War of 18 12 
cannot be neglected in naval annals. The tiny American navy 
retrieved the failures of American land forces, and shook the 
British navy out of a notorious slackness in gunnery and dis- 
cipline engendered by its easy victories against France and 
Spain. 

In size the British Navy in 181 2 was more formidable than 
at any earlier period of the general war. Transport work 
with expeditionary forces, blockade and patrol in European 
waters, and commerce protection from the China Sea to the 
Baltic had in September, 1812, increased the fleet to 686 ves- 
sels in active service, including 120 of the line and 145 frigates. 
There were 75 in all on American stations, against the total 
American Navy of 16, of which the best were the fine 44-gun 
frigates Constitution, President and United States. In the 
face of such odds, and especially as England's European pre- 
occupations relaxed, the result was inevitable. After the first 
year of war, while a swarm of privateers and smaller war ves- 
sels still took heavy toll of British commerce, the frigates were 
blockaded in American ports and American commerce was 
destroyed. 

But before the blockade closed down, four frigate actions 

had been fought, three of them American victories. In each 

1 United States exports rose from a value of 56 million dollars in 1803 
to 108 million in 1807; then fell to 22 million in 1808, and after rising 
to about 50 million before the war, went down to 6 million in 1814. — 
Ibid., p 480. 



282 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



Ship* 


Commander 


Guns 


Wt.of 

broad- 
side 


Crew 


Casu- 
alties 


Place and date 


Constitution^ 

Guerriere (Brit.) . . . 


Hull 
Dacres 


54 
49 


684 
556 


456 
272 


14 
79 


750 miles east of 
Boston, Aug. 19, 
1812. 


United States 2 .... 
Macedonian (Brit.) 


Decatur 
Carden 


54 
49 


786 
547 


478 
301 


12 
104 


Off Canary Islands, 
Oct. 25, 1812. 


Constitution 2 

Java (Brit.) 


Bainbridge 
Lambert 


52 

49 


654 
576 


475 
426 


34 
150 


Near Bahia, Dec. 
29, 1812. 


Shannon (Brit.) 2 .. 


Lawrence 
Broke 


5o 
52 


542 
55° 


379 
330 


148 
83 


Off Boston, June 1, 
1813. 



1 The figures are from Roosevelt's 
is deducted for the short weight of 

2 Victorious. 



Naval War of 
American shot. 



1812, in which 7% 



instance, as will be seen from the accompanying table, the ad- 
vantage in weight of broadside was with the victor. The 
American frigates were in fact triumphs of American ship- 
building, finer in lines, more strongly timbered, and more 
heavily gunned than British ships of their class. But that good 
gunnery and seamanship figured in the results is borne out by 
the fact that of the eight sloop actions fought during the war, 
with a closer approach to equality of strength, seven were 
American victories. The British carronades that had pounded 
French ships at close range proved useless against opponents 
that knew how to choose and hold their distance and could 
shoot straight with long 24's. 

"It seems," said a writer in the London Times, "that the 
Americans have some superior mode of firing." But when 
Broke with his crack crew in the Shannon beat the Chesapeake 
fresh out of port, he demonstrated, as had the Americans in 
other actions, that the superiority was primarily a matter of 
training and skill. 

On the Great Lakes America's naval efforts should have 



TRAFALGAR AND AFTER 283 

centered, for here was her main objective and here she was on 
equal terms. Both sides were tremendously hampered in com- 
munications with their main sources of supply. But with an 
approach from the sea to Montreal, the British faced no more 
serious obstacle in the rapids of the St. Lawrence above than 
did the Americans on the long route up the Mohawk, over 
portages into Oneida Lake, and thence down the Oswego to 
Ontario, or else from eastern Pennsylvania over the moun- 
tains to Lake Erie. The wilderness waterways on both sides 
soon saw the strange spectacle of immense anchors, cables, 
cannon, and ship tackle of all kinds, as well as armies of 
sailors, shipwrights, and riggers, making their way to the new 
rival bases at Sackett's Harbor and Kingston, both near the 
foot of Lake Ontario. 

Of the whole lake and river frontier, Ontario was of the 
most vital importance. A decisive American victory here, in- 
cluding the capture of Kingston, would cut enemy communi- 
cations and settle the control of all western Canada. Kingston 
as an objective had the advantage over Montreal that it was 
beyond the direct reach of the British navy. The British, 
fully realizing the situation, made every effort to build up 
their naval forces on this lake, and gave Commodore Yeo, who 
was in command, strict orders to avoid action unless certain 
of success. On the other hand, the American commander, 
Chauncey, though an energetic organizer, made the mistake of 
assuming that his mission was also defensive. Hence when 
one fleet was strengthened by a new ship it went out and 
chased the other off the lake, but there was little fighting, both 
sides engaging in a grand shipbuilding rivalry and playing for 
a sure thing. Naval control remained unsettled and shifting 
throughout the war. It was fortunate, indeed, says the 
British historian, James, that the war ended when it did, or 
there would not have been room on the lake to maneuver the 
two fleets. The St. Lawrence, a 112-gun three-decker com- 
pleted at Kingston in 1814, was at the time the largest man-of- 
war in the world. 

Possibly a growing lukewarmness about the war, manifested 
on both sides, prevented more aggressive action. But it did 



284 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

not prevent two brilliant American victories in the lesser thea- 
ters of Lake Erie and Lake Champlain. Perry's achievement 
on Lake Erie in building a superior flotilla in the face of all 
manner of obstacles was even greater than that of the victory 
itself. The result of the latter, won on September 10, 1813, 
is summed up in his despatch : "We have met the enemy and 
they are ours — 2 ships, 2 brigs, 1 schooner, and 1 sloop." It 
assured the safety of the northwestern frontier. 

On Lake Champlain Macdonough's successful defense just 
a year later held up an invasion which, though it would not 
have been pushed very strenuously in any case, might have 
made our position less favorable for the peace negotiations 
then already under way. In this action, as in the one on Lake 
Erie, the total strength of each of the opposing flotillas, meas- 
ured in weight of broadsides (1192 pounds for the British 
against 1194 for the Americans), was about that of a single 
ship-of-the-line. But the number of units employed raised all 
the problems of a squadron engagement. Macdonough's 
shrewd choice of position in Plattsburg Bay, imposing upon 
the enemy a difficult approach under a raking fire, and his ex- 
cellent handling of his ships in action, justify his selection as 
the ablest American naval leader developed by the war. 

At the outbreak of the American War, France and England 
had been engaged in a death grapple in which the rights of 
neutrals were trampled under foot. Napoleon, by his paper 
blockade and confiscations on any pretext, had been a more 
glaring offender. But America's quarrel was after all not 
with France, who needed American trade, but with England, 
a commercial rival, who could back her restrictions by naval 
power. Once France was out of the war, the United States 
found it easy to come to terms with England, whose com- 
merce was suffering severely from American privateers. 1 At 
the close of the war the questions at issue when it began had 

1 According to figures cited in Mahan's War of 1812, (Vol. II, p. 224), 
22 American naval vessels took 165 British prizes, and 526 privateers took 
1344 prizes. In the absence of adequate motives on either side for pro- 
longing the war, these losses, though not more severe than those in- 
flicted by French cruisers, were decisive factors for peace. 



TRAFALGAR AND AFTER 285 

dropped into abeyance, and were not mentioned in the treaty 
terms. 

The view taken of the aggressions of sea power in the Na- 
poleonic Wars will depend largely on the view taken regarding 
the justice of the cause in which it fought. It saved the Con- 
tinent from military conquest. It preserved the European bal- 
ance of power, a balance which statesmen of that age deemed 
essential to the safety of Europe and the best interests of 
America and the rest of the world. On the other hand, but 
for the sacrifices of England's land allies, the Continental 
System would have forced her to make peace, though still un- 
defeated at sea. Even if her territorial accessions were slight, 
England came out of the war undisputed "mistress of the 
seas" as she had never been before, and for nearly a century 
to come was without a dangerous rival in naval power and 
world commerce. 

REFERENCES 

For general history of the period see: Histories of the British 
Navy by Clowes (Vols. V, VI, 1900) and Hannay (1909), Mahan's 

Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire 
(1892) and War of 1812 (1905), Chevalier's Histoire de la Marine 
Frangaise sous la Premiere Republique (1886), Graviere's Guerres 
Maritimes (1885), Calender's Sea Kings of Britain (Vol. Ill, 191 1), 
and Maltzahn's Naval Warfare (tr. Miller, 1908). 

Among 1 biographies: Mahan's and Laughton's lives of Nelson, 
Anson's Life of Jervis (1913), Clark Russell's Life of Collingwooa 
(1892), and briefer sketches in From Howard to Nelson, ed. Lough ^ 
ton (1899). 

For the Trafalgar campaign see: 
British Admiralty blue-book on The Tactics of Trafalgar (with 
bibliography, 1913), Corbett's Campaign of Trafalgar (1910), 
Col. Desbriere's Projets et Tentatives de Debarquement aux 
Iles Britanniques (1902) and Campagne Maritime de Tra- 
falgar (1907). 
See also Col. C. E. Callwell's Military Operations and Maritime 
Preponderance (1913), and Professor Clive Day's History of 
Commerce (revised edition, 191 1, with bibliography). 



CHAPTER XIV 

REVOLUTION IN NAVAL WARFARE: HAMPTON 
ROADS AND LISSA. 

During the 19th century, from 18 15 to 1898, naval power, 
though always an important factor in international relations, 
played in general a passive role. The wars which marked the 
unification of Germany and Italy and the thrusting back of 
Turkey from the Balkans were fought chiefly on land. The 
navy of England, though never more constantly busy in pro- 
tecting her far-flung empire, was not challenged to a genuine 
contest for mastery of the seas. In the Greek struggle for in- 
dependence there were two naval engagements of some conse- 
quence — Chios (1822), where the Greeks with fireships de- 
stroyed a Turkish squadron and gained temporary control of 
the ^Egean, and Navarino (1827), in which a Turkish force 
consisting principally of frigates was wiped out by a fleet 
of the western powers. But both of these actions were one- 
sided, and showed nothing new in types or tactics. In the 
American Civil War control of the sea was important and 
even decisive, but was overwhelmingly in the hands of the 
North. Hence the chief naval interest of the period lies not so 
much in the fighting as in the revolutionary changes in ships, 
weapons, and tactics — changes which parallel the extraordin- 
ary scientific progress of the century; and the engagements 
may be studied now, as they were studied then, as testing and 
illustrating the new methods and materials of naval war. 

Changes in Ships and Weapons 

Down to the middle of the 19th century there had been only 
a slow and slight development in ships and weapons for a 

286 



HAMPTON ROADS AND LISSA 287 

period of nearly 300 years. A sailor of the Armada would 
soon have felt at home in a three-decker of 18 15. But he would 
have been helpless as a child in the fire-driven iron monsters 
that fought at Hampton Roads. The shift from sail to steam, 
from oak to iron, from shot to shell, and from muzzle-loading 
smoothbore to breech-loading rifle began about 1850; and 
progress thereafter was so swift that an up-to-date ship of 
each succeeding decade was capable of defeating a whole 
squadron of ten years before. Success came to depend on the 
adaptability apd mechanical skill of personnel, as well as their 
courage and discipline, and also upon the progressive spirit of 
constructors and naval experts, faced with the most difficult 
problems, the wrong solution of which would mean the waste 
of millions of dollars and possible defeat in war. Every 
change had to overcome the spirit of conservatism inherent in 
military organizations, where seniority rules, errors are sancti- 
fied by age, and every innovation upsets cherished routine. 
Thus in the contract for Ericsson's Monitor it was stipulated 
that she should have masts, spars, and sails ! 

The first successful steamboat for commerce was, as is well 
known, Robert Fulton's flat-bottomed side-wheeler Clermont, 
which in August, 1807, made the 150 miles from New York 
to Albany in 32 hours. IDuring the war of 18 12 Fulton de- 
signed for coast defense a heavily timbered, double-ender float- 
ing battery, with a single paddle-wheel located inside amid- 
ships. On her trial trip in 181 5 this first steam man-of-war, 
the U. S. S. Fulton, carried 26 guns and made over 6 knots, 
but she was then laid up and was destroyed a few years later 
by firejj Ericsson's successful application of the screw pro- 
peller in 1837 made steam propulsion more feasible for battle- 
ships by clearing the decks and eliminating the clumsy and ex- 
posed side-wheels. |The first American screw warship was the 
U. S. S. Princeton, of 1843, but every ship in the American 
Navy at the outbreak of the Civil War had at least auxiliary 
sail rig/j Though by 1850 England had 30 vessels with auxil- 
iary steam, the Devastation of 1869 was the first in the British 
service to use steam exclusively. Long after this time old 
"floating museums" with sail rig and smoothbores were re- 



288 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



tained in most navies for motives of economy, and even the 
first ships of the American "White Squadron" were encum- 
bered with sails and spars. 

Progress in ordnance began about 1822, when explosive 
shells, hitherto used only in mortars, were first adopted for 
ordinary cannon with horizontal fire. At the time of the 
Crimean War shells were the usual ammunition for lower 




£63 feet over &II 
fVIERR Ifvl AC , 1862 




its Feet ow&r all 
MONITOR, 18 62 



EARLY IRONCLADS 



tier guns, and at Sinope in 1853 their smashing effect against 
wooden hulls was demonstrated when a Russian squadron de- 
stroyed some Turkish vessels which fired only solid shot. 
The great professional cry of the time, we are told, became 
"For God's sake, keep out the shell." x 

In 185 1 Minie rifles supplanted in the British army the old 

1 Custance, The Ship of the Line in Battle, p. 9. 



HAMPTON ROADS AND LISSA 289 

smoothbore musket or "Brown Bess," with which at ranges 
above 200 yards it was difficult to hit a target 1 1 feet square. 
This change led quickly to the rifling of heavy ordnance as 
well. The first Armstrong rifles of 1858 — named after their 
inventor, Sir William Armstrong, head of the Royal Gun 
Factory at Woolwich — included guns up to 7-inch diameter 
of bore. The American navy, however, depended chiefly on 
smoothbores throughout the Civil War. 

Breech-loading, which had been used centuries earlier, came 
in again with these first rifles, but after 1865 the British navy 
went back to muzzle-loading and stuck to it persistently for 
the next 15 years. By that time the breech-loading mechan- 
ism had been simplified, and its adoption became necessary to 
secure greater length of gun barrel, increased rapidity of fire, 
and better protection for gun-crews. About 1880 quick-fire 
guns of from 3 to 6 inches, firing 12 or 15 shots a minute, were 
mounted in secondary batteries. 

As already suggested, the necessity for armor arose from 
the smashing and splintering effect of shell against wooden 
targets and the penetrating power of rifled guns. To attack 
Russian forts in the Crimea, the French navy in 1855 built 
three steam-driven floating batteries, the Tonnant, Lave, and 
Devastation, each protected by 4.3-inch plates and mounting 
8 56-lb. guns. In the reduction of the Kinburn batteries, in 
October of the same year, these boats suffered little, but were 
helped out by an overwhelming fire from wooden ships, 630 
guns against 81 in the forts. 

The French armored ship Gloire of 1859 caused England 
serious worry about her naval supremacy, and led at once to 
H. M. S. Warrior, like the Gloire, full rigged with auxiliary 
steam. The Warrior's 4.5-inch armor, extending from 6 feet 
below the waterline to' 16 feet above and covering about 42 
per cent of the visible target, was proof against the weapons of 
the time. At this initial stage in armored construction, naval 
experts turned with intense interest to watch the work of iron- 
clads against ships and forts in the American Civil War. 



290 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

The American Civil War 

The naval activities of this war are too manifold to follow in 
detail. For four years the Union navy was kept constantly 
occupied with the tasks of blockading over 3000 miles of 
coast-line, running down enemy commerce destroyers, co- 
operating with the army in the capture of coast strongholds, 
and opening the Mississippi and other waterways leading into 
the heart of the Confederacy. To make the blockade effective 
and cut off the South from the rest of the world, the Federal 
Government unhesitatingly applied the doctrine of "continu- 
ous voyage," seizing and condemning neutral ships even when 
bound from England to Bermuda or the Bahamas, if their 
cargo was ultimately destined for Southern ports. The doc- 
trine was declared inapplicable when the last leg of the journey 
was by land, 1 doubtless because there was little danger of 
heavy traffic across the Mexican frontier. Blockade runners 
continued to pour goods into the South until the fall of Fort 
Fisher in 1865; but as the blockade became more stringent, it 
crippled the finances of the Confederacy, shut out foodstuffs 
and munitions, and shortened, if it did not even have a de- 
cisive effect in winning the war. 

To meet these measures the South was at first practically 
without naval resources, and had to turn at once to new meth- 
ods of war. Its first move was to convert the steam frigate 
Merrimac, captured half-burned with the Norfolk Navy Yard, 
into a ironclad ram. A casemate of 4 inches of iron over 22 
inches of wood, sloping 35 degrees from the vertical, was ex- 
tended over 178 feet, or about two-thirds of her hull. Beyond 
this structure the decks were awash. The Merrimac had an 
armament of 6 smoothbores and 4 rifles, two of the latter being 
pivot-guns at the bow and stern, and a 300-lb. cast-iron beak 
or ram. With her heavy load of guns and armor she drew 22 
feet aft and could work up a speed of barely 5 knots. 

Faced with this danger, the North hurriedly adopted Erics- 
son's plan for the Monitor, 2 which was contracted for on Octo- 
ber 4, 1 861, and launched after 100 days. Old marlin-spike 

*Peternoff Case, 1866 (5 Wall, 28). 

'So called by Ericsson because it would "admonish" the South, and 



HAMPTON ROADS AND LISSA 291 

seamen pooh-poohed this "cheesebox on a raft." As a naval 
officer said, it might properly be worshiped by its designer, 
for it was an image of nothing in the heavens above, or the 
earth beneath, or the waters under the earth. It consisted of a 
revolving turret with 8-inch armor and two n-inch smooth- 
bore guns, set on a raft-like structure 142 feet in length by 
413/2 feet in beam, projecting at bow, stern, and sides beyond 
a flat-bottomed lower hull. Though unseaworthy, the Monitor 
maneuvered quickly and drew only 10^2 feet. She was first 
ordered to the Gulf, but on March 6 this destination was sud- 
denly changed to the Chesapeake. 

The South in fact won the race in construction and got its 
ship first into action by a margin of just half a day. At noon 
on March 8, with the iron-workers still driving her last rivets, 
the Merrimac steamed out of Norfolk and advanced ponder- 
ously upon the three sail and two steam vessels then anchored 
in Hampton Roads. 

In the Northern navy there had been much skepticism about 
the ironclad and no concerted plan to meet her attack. Under 
a rain of fire from the Union ships, and from shore fortifica- 
tions too distant to be effective, the Merrimac rammed and 
sank the sloop-of-war Cumberland, and then, after driving 
the frigate Congress aground, riddled her with shells. To- 
wards nightfall the Confederate vessel moved down stream, to 
continue the slaughter next day. 

About 12 o'clock that night, after two days of terrible buf- 
feting on the voyage down the coast, the little Monitor 
anchored on the scene lighted up by the burning wreck of the 
Congress. The first battle of ironclads began next morning 
at 8:30 and continued with slight intermission till noon. It 
ended in a triumph, not for either ship, but for armor over 
guns. The Monitor fired 41 solid shot, 20 of which struck 
home, but merely cracked some of the Merrimac' s outer plates. 
The Monitor was hit 22 times by enemy shells. Neither craft 
was seriously harmed and not a man was killed on either side, 
though several were stunned or otherwise injured. Lieut. 

also suggest to England "doubts as to the propriety of completing four 
steel-clad ships at three and one-half millions apiece." 



292 A HISTOKY OF SEA POWER 

Worden, in command of the Monitor, was nearly blinded by a 
shell that smashed in the pilot house, a square iron structure 
then located not above the turret but on the forward deck. 

The drawn battle was hailed as a Northern victory. Im- 
agination had been drawing dire pictures of what the Merrimac 
might do. At a Cabinet meeting in Washington Sunday morn- 
ing, March 9, Secretary of War Stanton declared : "The Mer- 
rimac will change the course of the war; she will destroy 
seriatim every naval vessel; she will lay all the cities on the 
seaboard under contribution. I have no doubt that the enemy 
is at this minute on the way to Washington, and that we shall 
have a shell from one of her guns in the White House before 
we leave this room." The menace was somewhat exaggerated. 
With her submerged decks, feeble engines, and general awk- 
wardness, the Merrimac could scarcely navigate in Hampton 
Roads. In the first day's fighting her beak was wrenched off 
and a leak started, two guns were put out of action, and her 
funnel and all other top-hamper were riddled. As was shown 
by Farragut in Mobile Bay, and again by Tegetthoff at Lissa, 
even wooden vessels, if in superior numbers, might do some- 
thing against an ironclad in an aggressive melee. 

Both the antagonists at Hampton Roads ended their careers 
before the close of 1862; the Merrimac was burned by her 
crew at the evacuation of Norfolk, and the Monitor was sunk 
under tow in a gale off Hatteras, But turret ships, monitors, 
and armored gunboats soon multiplied in the Union navy and 
did effective service against the defenses of Southern harbors 
and rivers. Under Farragut's energetic leadership, vessels 
both armored and unarmored passed with relatively slight in- 
jury the forts below New Orleans, at Vicksburg, and at the 
entrance to Mobile Bay. Even granting that the shore artil- 
lery was out of date and not very expertly served, it is well 
to realize that similar conditions may conceivably recur, and 
that the superiority of forts over ships is qualified by condi- 
tions of equipment and personnel. 

Actually to destroy or capture shore batteries by naval force 
is another matter. As Ericsson said, "A single shot will sink 



HAMPTON ROADS AND LISSA 293 

a ship, while ioo rounds cannot silence a fort." 1 Attacks of 
this kind against Fort McAllister and Charleston failed. At 
Charleston, April 7, 1863, the ironclads faced a cross-fire from 
several forts, 47 smoothbores and 17 rifles against 29 smooth- 
bores and 4 rifles in the ships, and in waters full of obstructions 
and mines. 

The capture of Fort Fisher, commanding the main entrance 
to Wilmington, North Carolina, was accomplished in January, 
1865, by the combined efforts of the army and navy. The 
fort, situated on a narrow neck of land between the Cape Fear 
River and the sea, had 20 guns on its land face and 24 on its 
sea face, 15 of them rifled. Against it were brought 5 iron- 
clads with 18 guns, backed up by over 200 guns in the rest of 
the fleet. After a storm of shot and shell for three successive 
days, rising at times to "drum-fire," the barrage was lifted at 
a signal and troops and sailors dashed forward from their 
positions on shore. Even after this preparation the capture 
cost 1000 men. As at Kinburn in the Crimean War, the ef- 
fectiveness of the naval forces was due less to protective armor 
than to volume of fire. 

Submarines and Torpedoes 

In the defense of Southern harbors, mines and torpedoes for 
the first time came, into general use, and the submarine scored 
its first victim. ^Experiments with these devices had been go- 
ing on for centuries, but were first brought close to practical 
success by David Bushnell, a Connecticut Yankee of the Amer- 
ican Revolution. His tiny submarine, resembling a mud-turtle 
standing on its tail, embodied many features of modern under- 
water boats, including a primitive conning tower, screw pro- 
pulsion (by foot power), a vertical screw to drive the craft 
down, and a detachable magazine with 150 pounds of gun- 
powder. The Turtle paddled around and even under British 
men-of-war off New York and New London, but could not 
drive a spike through their copper bottoms to attach its mine."] 
f"Robert Fulton, probably the greatest genius in nautical in- 
*, Wilson, Ironclads in Action, Vol. I, p. 91. 



294 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



vention, carried the development of both mines and sub- 
marines much further. His Nautilus, so-called because its col- 
lapsible sail resembled that of the familiar chambered nautilus, 
was surprisingly ahead of its time; it had a fish-like shape, 
screw propulsion (by a two-man hand winch), horizontal div- 
ing rudder, compressed air tank, water tank filled or emptied 
by a pump, and a torpedo x consisting of a detachable case 
of gunpowder. A lanyard ran from the torpedo through an 
eye in a spike, to be driven in the enemy hull, and thence to the 
submarine, which as it moved away brought the torpedo up taut 



ATTACH/NG @ SCREW 




BUS H NELL S TURTLE 



against the spike and caused its explosion. Fulton interested 
Napoleon in his project, submerged frequently for an hour or 
more, and blew up a hulk in Brest harbor. But the greybeards 
in the French navy frowned on these novel methods, declar- 
ing them "immoral" and "contrary to the laws of war.'HI 

Later the British Government entered into negotiations with 
the inventor, and in October, 1804, used his mines in an un- 
successful attack on the French flotilla of invasion at Bou- 
logne. Only one pinnace was sunk. Fulton still maintained 
that he could "sweep all military marines off the ocean." 2 
But Trafalgar ended his chances. As the old Admiral Earl St. 

x This name, coined by Fulton, was from the torpedo electricus, or 
cramp fish, which kills its victim by electric shock. 
2 Letter to Pitt, Jan. 6, 



HAMPTON ROADS AND LISSA 295 



SAIL 



HULL OF 

ENEMY VESSEL 



ATTACHING PIN 
FOR. MINE 




CONNING 
TOWER.- 



I PIN ON WHICH RUDDER. SWINGS' 

HORIZONTAL RUDDER.* 
VERTICAL RUDDER-' 
/6Fi-. OV£& ALL 



FULTON S NAUTILUS 



Vincent remarked, "Pitt [the Prime Minister] would be the 
greatest fool that ever existed to encourage a mode of war 
which they who command the sea do not want and which if 
successful would deprive them of it." So Fulton took £15,000 
and dropped his schemes. 

Much cruder than the Nautilus, owing to their hurried con- 
struction, were the Confederate "Davids" of the Civil War. 
One of these launches, which ran only semi-submerged, drove 
a spar torpedo against the U. S. S. New Ironsides off Charles- 
ton, but it exploded on the rebound, too far away. The C. S. 
S. Hunley was a real submarine, and went down readily, but 
on five occasions it failed to emerge properly, and drowned in 
these experiments about 35 men. In August, 1864, running 
on the surface, it sank by torpedo the U. S. Corvette Housa- 



296 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

tonic off Charleston, but went down in the suction of the 
larger vessel, carrying to death its last heroic crew. 

By the end of the century, chiefly owing to the genius and 
patient efforts of two American inventors, John P. Holland 
and Simon Lake, the submarine was passing from the experi- 
mental to the practical stage. Its possibilities were increased 
by the Whitehead torpedo (named after its inventor, a British 
engineer established in Fiume, Austria), which came out in 
1868 and was soon adopted in European navies. With gyro- 
scopic stabilizing devices and a "warmer" for the compressed 
air of its engine, the torpedo attained before 1900 a speed of 
28 knots and a possible range of 1000 yards. Its first victim 
was the Chilian warship Blanco, sunk in 189 1 at 50 yards after 
two misses. Thornycroft in England first achieved speed for 
small vessels, and in 1873 began turning out torpedo boats. 
Destroyers came in twenty years later, and by the end of the 
century were making over 30 knots. 

Long before this time the lessons of the Civil War had 
hastened the adoption of armor, the new ships ranging from 
high-sided vessels with guns in broadside, as in the past, to 
low freeboard craft influenced by the Monitor design, with a 
few large guns protected by revolving turrets or fixed bar- 
bettes, and with better provision for all-around fire. Ord- 
nance improved in penetrating power, until the old wrought- 
iron armor had to be 20 inches thick and confined to water- 
line and batteries. Steel "facing" and the later plates of 
Krupp or Harveyized steel made it possible again to lighten 
and spread out the armor, and during the last decade of the 
century it steadily increased its ascendancy over the gun. 

The Battle of Lissa 

The adoption of armor meant sacrifice of armament, and a 
departure from Farragut's well-tried maxim, "The best pro- 
tection against the enemy's fire is a well-sustained fire from 
your own guns." Thus the British Dreadnought of 1872 gave 
35% of its displacement to armor and only 5% to armament. 
Invulnerability was secured at the expense of offensive power. 



HAMPTON ROADS AND LISSA 297 

That aggressive tactics and weapons retained all their old 
value in warfare was to receive timely illustration in the Battle 
of Lissa, fought in the year after the American war. The 
engagement illustrated also another of Farragut's pungent 
maxims to the effect that iron in the ships is less important 
than "iron in the men" — a saying especially true when, as 
with the Austrians at Lissa, the iron is in the chief in com- 
mand. 

In 1866 Italy and Prussia attacked Austria in concert, Italy 
having secured from Bismarck a pledge of Venetia in the 
event of victory. Though beaten at Custozza on June 24, the 
Italians did their part by keeping busy an Austrian army of 
80,000. Moltke crushed the northern forces of the enemy at 
Sadowa on July 3, and within three weeks had reached the 
environs of Vienna and practically won the war. Lissa was 
fought on July 20, just 6 days before the armistice. This 
general political and military situation should be borne in 
mind as throwing some light on the peculiar Italian strategy 
in the Lissa campaign. 

Struggling Italy, her unification under the House of Pied- 
mont as yet only partly achieved, had shown both foresight 
and energy in building up a fleet. Her available force on the 
day of Lissa consisted of 12 armored ships and 16 wooden 
steam vessels of some fighting value. The ironclads included 
7 armored frigates, the best of which were the two "kings," 
Re d' Italia and Re di Portogallo, built the year before in New 
York (rather badly, it is said), each armed with about 30 
heavy rifles. Then there was the new single-turret ram 
Affondatore, or "Sinker," with two 300-pounder 10-inch rifles, 
which came in from England only the day before the battle. 
Some of the small protected corvettes and gunboats were of 
much less value, the Palestro, for instance, which suffered 
severely in the fight, having a thin sheet of armor over only 
two-fifths of her exposed hull. 

The Austrian fleet had the benefit of some war experience 
against Denmark in the North Sea two years before, but it was 
far inferior and less up-to-date, its armored ships consisting of 
7 screw frigates armed chiefly with smoothbores. Of the 



298 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



wooden ships, there were 7 screw frigates and corvettes, 9 
gunboats and, schooners, and 3 little side-wheelers — a total of 
19. The following table indicates the relative strength: 





Armored 


Wooden 


Small craft 


Total 


Rifles 


Total w't 




No. 


Guns 


No. 


Guns 


No. 


Guns 


No. 


Guns 


No. 


Weight 


of metal 


Austria 
Italy. . 


7 
12 


176 
243 


7 
11 


304 
382 


12 

5 


52 

16 


22 
28 


532 
641 


121 
276 


7.130 
28,700 


23.538 
53.236 



Thus in general terms the Italians were nearly twice as 
strong in main units, could fire twice as heavy a weight of 
metal from all their guns, and four times as heavy from 
their rifles. Even without the Affondatore, their advantage 
was practically as great as this from the beginning of the war. 

With such a preponderance, it would seem as if Persano, 
the Italian commander in chief, could easily have executed his 
savage-sounding orders to "sweep the enemy from the Adri- 
atic, and to attack and blockade them wherever found." He 
was dilatory, however, in assembling his fleet, negligent in 
practice and gun drill, and passive in his whole policy to a 
degree absolutely ruinous to morale. War was declared June 
20, and had long been foreseen; yet it was June 25 before he 
moved the bulk of his fleet from Taranto to Ancona in the 
Adriatic. Here on the 27th they were challenged by 13 Aus- 
trian ships, which lay off the port cleared for action for two 
hours, while Persano made no real move to fight. It is said 
that the Italian defeat at Custozza three days before had taken 
the heart out of him. On July 8 he put to sea for a brief three 
days' cruise and went through some maneuvers and signaling 
but no firing, though many of the guns were newly mounted 
and had never been tried by their crews. 

At this time Napoleon III of France had already under- 
taken mediation between the hostile powers. In spite of the 
orders of June 8, quoted above, which seem sufficiently defi- 



HAMPTON ROADS AND LISSA 299 

nite, and urgent orders to the same effect later, Persano was 
unwilling to take the offensive, and kept complaining of lack 
of clear instructions as to what he should do. He was later 
convicted of cowardice and negligence; but the campaign he 
finally undertook against Lissa was dangerous enough, and it 
seems possible that some secret political maneuvering was 
partly responsible for his earlier delay. 1 

It is significant at least that the final proposal to make a 
descent upon the fortified island of Lissa came not from Per- 
sano but from the Minister of Marine. On July 15 the latter 
took up the project with the fleet chief of staff, d'Amico, and 
with Rear Admiral Vacca, but not until later with Persano. 
All agreed that the prospect of a truce allowed no time for a 
movement against Venice or the Austrian base at Pola, but 
that they should strike a swift stroke elsewhere. Lissa com- 
manded the Dalmatian coast, was essential to naval control 
in the Adriatic, and was coveted by Italy then as in later times. 
It would be better than trying to crush the enemy fleet at the 
risk of her own if she could enter the peace conference with 
possession of Lissa a fait accompli. 

Undertaken in the face of an undefeated enemy fleet, this 
move has been justly condemned by naval strategists. But 
with a less alert opponent the coup might have succeeded. 
Tegetthoff, the Austrian commander, was not yet 41 years of 
age, but had been in active naval service since he was 18, and 
had led a squadron bravely in a fight with the Danes two years 
before off Heligoland. He had his heterogeneous array of 
fighting craft assembled at Pola at the outbreak of war. "Give 
me everything you have," he told the Admiralty when they 
asked him what ships he wanted; "I'll find some use for them." 
His crews were partly men of Slav and Italian stock from the 
Adriatic coast, including 600 from Venice ; there is no reason 
for supposing them better than those of Persano. The influ- 

1 In July Persano wrote to the Deputy Boggio : "Leave the care of 
my reputation to me; I would rather be wrongly dishonored than rightly 
condemned. Patience will bring peace; I shall be called a traitor, but 
nevertheless Italy will have her fleet intact, and that of Austria will be 
rendered useless." Quoted in Bernotti, II Potere Marittimo nella 
Grande Guersa, p. 177. 



300 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

ence of their leader, however, inspired them with loyalty and 
fighting spirit, and their defiance of the Italians at Ancona on 
June 27 increased their confidence. When successive cable 
messages from Lissa satisfied him that the Italian fleet was 
not attempting a diversion but was actually committed to an 
attack on the island, Tegetthoff" set out thither on July 19 with 
his entire fighting force. His order of sailing was the order 
of battle. "Every captain knew the admiral's intention as well 
as the admiral himself did; every officer knew what had to be 
done, and every man had some idea of it, and above all knew 
that he had to fight." x 

In the meantime the Italian drive on Lissa had gone ahead 
slowly. The island batteries were on commanding heights and 
manned by marines and artillerymen resolved to fight to the 
last ditch. During the second day's bombardment the Aifon- 
datore appeared, and also some additional troops needed to 
complete the landing force. Two-thirds of the guns on shore 
were silenced that day, and if the landing operations had been 
pushed, the island captured, and the fleet taken into the pro- 
tected harbor of St. Giorgio, Tegetthoff" would have had a 
harder problem to solve. But as the mist blew away with a 
southerly wind at 10 o'clock on the next day, July 20, the 
weary garrison on the heights of the island gave cheer after 
cheer as they saw the Austrian squadron plunging through the 
head seas at full speed from the northeastward, while the Ital- 
ian ships hurriedly drew together north of the island to meet 
the blow. 

The Austrians advanced in three successive divisions, iron- 
clads, wooden frigates, and finally the smaller vessels, each in 
a wedge-shaped formation (shown by the diagram), with the 
apex toward the enemy. The object was to drive through the 
Italian line if possible near the van and bring on a close scrim- 
mage in which all ships could take part, ramming tactics could 
be employed, and the enemy would profit less by their superi- 
ority in armor and guns. Like Nelson's at Trafalgar, Teget- 
thoff's formation was one not likely to be imitated, but it was 

1 Laughton, Studies in Naval History, Tegetthoff, p. 164. 



HAMPTON ROADS AND LISSA 301 

at least' simple and well understood, and against a passive re- 
sistance it gave the results planned. 

"Ecco i pescatori!" (Here come the fishermen), cried Per- 
sano, with a scorn he was far from actually feeling. The Ital- 
ians were in fact caught at a disadvantage. One of their best 



i bo&tS , e-fcci. 







SAN MARTINO^ PpPS&no'9 

' 4B first position 

\ ^ 

■ R B dl PORTOSAU-O ^L 



(A/IARIA PIA 



VARESE A 



TERR IBLE 




BATTLE OF LISSA, JULY 20, 1 866 



ships, the F ormidabile , had been put hors de combat by the 
batteries on the day before. Another, coming in late from the 
west end of the island, took no part in the action. The wooden 
ships, owing to the cowardice of their commander, Albini, also 
kept out of the fight, though Persano signaled desperately to 
them to enter the engagement and "surround the enemy rear." 
With his remaining ironclads Persano formed three divisions 



302 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

of three ships each and swung across the enemy's bows in line 
ahead. Just at the critical moment, and for no very explicable 
motive, he shifted his flag from the Re d' Italia in the center 
to the Affondatore, which was steaming alone on the starboard 
side of the line. The change was not noted by all his ships, 
and thus caused confusion of orders. The delay involved also 
left a wider gap between van and center, and through this the 
Austrians plunged, TegetthofY in his flagship Erzherzog Fer- 
dinand Max leading the way. 

Here orderly formation ended, and only the more striking 
episodes stand out in a desperate close combat, during which 
the black ships of Austria and the gray of Italy rammed or 
fired into each other amid a smother of smoke and spray. 
The Austrian left flank and rear held up the Italian van ; the 
Austrian ironclads engaged the Italian center ; and the wooden 
ships of the Austrian middle division, led by the 92-gun 
Kaiser, smashed into the Italian rear. Of all the Austrian 
ships, the big Kaiser, a relic of other days, saw the hardest 
fighting. Twice she dodged the Affondatore' s ram, and she 
caught one of the latter' s 300-pound projectiles. Then the Re 
di Portogallo bore down, but Petz, the Kaiser's captain, rang 
for full speed ahead and steered for the ironclad, striking a 
glancing blow and scraping past her, while both ships poured 
in a heavy fire. The Kaiser soon afterward drew out of 
the action, her foremast and funnel down, and a bad blaze 
burning amidships. Altogether she fired 850 rounds in the 
action, or about one-fifth of the total fired by the Austrians, 
and she received 80 hits, again one-fifth of the total. Of the 
38 Austrians killed and 138 wounded in the battle, she lost 
respectively 24 and 75. 

The Kaiser's combat, though more severe, was typical of 
what was going on elsewhere. The Italian gunboat Palestro 
was forced to withdraw to fight a fire that threatened her 
magazines. The Re d' Italia, which was at first supposed by 
the Austrians to be Persano's flagship, was a center of attack 
and had her steering gear disabled. As she could gO' only 
straight ahead or astern, the Austrian flagship seized the 
chance and rammed her squarely amidships at full speed, 



HAMPTON ROADS AND LISSA 303 

crashing through her armor and opening an immense hole. 
The Italian gunboat heeled over to starboard, then back again, 
and in a few seconds went down, with a loss of 381 men. 

This spectacular incident practically decided the battle. 
After an hour's fighting the two squadrons drew apart about 
noon, the Austrians finally entering St. Giorgio harbor and 
the Italians withdrawing to westward. During the retreat 
the fire on the Palestro reached her ammunition and she blew 
up with a loss of 231 of her crew. Except in the two vessels 
destroyed, the Italian losses were slight — 8 killed and 40 
wounded. But the armored ships were badly battered, and 
less than a month later the Aifondatore sank in a squall in 
Ancona harbor, partly, it was thought, owing to injuries 
received at Lissa. 

For a long time after this fight, an exaggerated view was 
held regarding the value of ramming, line abreast formation, 
and bow fire. Weapons condition tactics, and these tactics 
of Tegetthoff were suited to the means he had to work with. 
But they were not those which should have been adopted by 
his opponents; nor would they have been successful had the 
Italians brought their broadsides to bear on a parallel course 
and avoided a melee. What the whole campaign best illus- 
trates — and the lesson has permanent interest — is how a pas- 
sive and defensive policy, forced upon the Italian fleet by the 
incompetence of its admiral or otherwise, led to its demorali- 
zation and ultimate destruction. After a long period of inac- 
tivity, Persano weakened his force against shore defenses 
before he had disposed of the enemy fleet, and was then taken 
at a disadvantage. His passive strategy was reflected in his 
tactics. He engaged with only a part of his force, and 
without a definite plan; "A storm of signals swept over his 
squadron" as it went into action. What really decided the 
battle was not the difference in ships, crews, or weapons, but 
the difference in aggressiveness and ability of the two ad- 
mirals in command. 



(304 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

The Battle of the Yalu 

Twenty-eight years elapsed after Lissa before the next sig- 
nificant naval action, the Battle of the Yalu, between fleets of 
China and Japan. Yet the two engagements may well be 
taken together, since at the Yalu types and tactics were still 
transitional, and the initial situation at Lissa was duplicated — 
line abreast against line ahead. The result, however, was 
reversed, for the Japanese in line ahead took the initiative, 
used their superior speed to conduct the battle on their own 
terms, and won the day. 

Trouble arose in the Far East over the dissolution of the 
decrepit monarchy of Korea, upon which both Japan and 
China cast covetous eyes. As nominal suzereign, China in 
the spring of 1894 sent 2000 troops to Korea to suppress an 
insurrection, without observing certain treaty stipulations 
which required her to notify Japan. The latter nation de- 
spatched 5000 men to Chemulpo in June. Hostilities broke 
out on July 25, when four fast Japanese cruisers, including 
the Naniwa Kan under the future Admiral Togo, fell upon 
the Chinese cruiser Tsi-yuen and two smaller vesesls, cap- 
tured the latter and battered the cruiser badly before she got 
away, and then to complete the day's work sank a Chinese 
troop transport, saving only the European officers on board. 

After this affair the Chinese Admiral Ting, a former caval- 
ry officer but with some naval experience, favored taking the 
offensive, since control of the. sea by China would at once 
decide the war. But the Chinese Foreign Council gave him 
orders not to cruise east of a line from Shantung to the mouth 
of the Yalu. Reverses on land soon forced him to give all his 
time to troop transportation, and this occupied both navies 
throughout the summer. 

On September 16, the day before the Battle of the Yalu, 
the Chinese battleships escorted transports with 5000 troops 
to the mouth of the Yalu, and on the following morning they 
were anchored quietly outside the river. "For weeks," writes 
an American naval officer who was in command of one of the 
Chinese battleships, "we had anticipated an engagement, and 



HAMPTON ROADS AND LISSA 305 

had had daily exercise at general quarters, etc., and little re- 
mained to be done. . . . The fleet went into action as well 
prepared as it was humanly possible for it to be with the same 
officers and men, handicapped as they were by official cor- 
ruption and treachery ashore." * As the midday meal was 
in preparation, columns of black smoke appeared to south- 
westward. The squadron at once weighed anchor, cleared 
for action, and put on forced draft, while "dark-skinned men, 
with queues tightly coiled around their heads, and with arms 
bare to the elbow, clustered along the decks in groups at the 
guns, waiting to kill or be killed." Out of the smoke soon 
emerged 12 enemy cruisers which, with information of the 
Chinese movements, had entered the Gulf intent on battle. 

The forces about to engage included the best ships of both 
nations. There were 12 on each side, excluding 4 Chinese 
torpedo boats, and 10 actually in each battle line. The main 
strength of the Chinese was concentrated in two> second-class 
battleships, the Ting-yuen and the Chen-yuen, Stettin-built in 
1882, each of 7430 tons, with 14-inch armor over half its; 
length, four 12-inch Krupp guns in two barbettes, and 6-inch 
rifles at bow and stern. The two barbettes were en echelon 
(the starboard just ahead of the port), in such a way that 
while all four guns could fire dead ahead only two' could bear 
on the port quarter or the starboard bow. These ships were 
designed for fighting head-on ; and hence to use them to best 
advantage Admiral Ting formed his squadron in line abreast, 
with the Ting-yuen and Chen-yuen in the center. The rest of 
the line were a "scratch lot" of much smaller vessels — two 
armored cruisers (Lai-yuen and King-yuen) with 8 to 9-inch 
armored belts; three protected cruisers (Tsi-yuen, Chi-yuen, 
and Ching-yuen) with 2 to 4-inch armored decks; on the left 
flank the old corvette Kwang-chia; and opposite her two other 
"lame ducks" of only 1300 tons, the Chao-yung and Yang-wei. 
Ting had properly strengthened his center, but had left his 
flanks fatally weak. On board the flagship Ting-yuen was 
Major von Hannekin,^ China's military adviser, and an ex- 

1 Commander P. N. McGiffin, The Battle of the Yalu, Century Maga- 
zine, August, 1895, pp. 585-604. 



306 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



petty officer of the British navy named Nichols. Philo N. Mc- 
Giffin, a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, com- 
manded the Chen-yuen. 

The Japanese advanced in column, or line ahead, in two 
divisions. The first, or "flying squadron," was led by Rear 
Admiral Tsuboi in the Yoshino, and consisted of four fast 
protected cruisers. Four similar ships, headed by Vice Ad- 
miral Ito in the Matsushima, formed the chief units of the 
main squadron, followed by the older and slower ironclads, 
Fuso and Hiyei. The little gunboat Akagi and the converted 
steamer Saikio Maru had orders not to engage, but neverthe- 
less pushed in on the left of the line. Aside from their two 
battleships, the Chinese had nothing to compare with these 
eight new and well-armed cruisers, the slowest of which could 
make 17^ knots. 

In armament the Japanese also had a marked advantage, as 
the following table, from Wilson's Ironclads in Action, will 
show: 





Ships 


Guns 


Shots in 10 Minutes 




Number 


6-inch 


Large 
quick fire 


Small q. f. 
and machine 


Number 


Weight of 
metal 




12 
10 


40 
34 


2 
66 


130 
154 


33 
185 


4,885 
11,706 



The smaller quick-fire and machine guns proved of slight 
value on either side, but the large Japanese quick-firers searched 
all unprotected parts of the enemy ships with a terrific storm 
of shells. After the experience of July 25, the Chinese had 
discarded much of their woodwork and top hamper, including 
boats, thin steel gun-shields, rails, needless rigging, etc., and 
used coal and sand bags on the upper decks ; but the unarm- 
ored ships nevertheless suffered severely. From the table it 
is evident that the Japanese could pour in six times as great 
a volume of fire. The Chinese had a slight advantage in 



HAMPTON ROADS AND LISSA 307 

Heavier guns, and their marksmanship, it is claimed, was 
equally accurate (possibly 10% hits on each side), but their 
ammunition was defective and consisted mostly of non-burst- 
ing projectiles. They had only 15 rounds of shell for each 
gun. 

During the approach the Japanese steered at first for the 
enemy center, thus concealing their precise objective, and then 
swung to port, with the aim of attacking on the weaker side 
of the Chinese battleships (owing to their barbette arrange- 
ment) and on the weaker flank of the line. In the meantime 
the Chinese steamed forward at about 6 knots and turned 
somewhat to keep head-on, thus forcing the Japanese to file 
across their bows. At 12.20 p.m. the Chen-yuen and Ting- 
yuen opened at 5800 yards on Tsuboi's squadron, which held 
its fire until at 3000 yards or closer it swung around the 
Chinese right wing. 

The main squadron followed. Admiral Ito has been criti- 
cized for thus drawing his line across the enemy's advance, 
instead of attacking their left flank. But he was previously 
committed to the movement, and executed it rapidly and for 
the most part at long range. Had the Chinese pressed for- 
ward at best speed, Lissa might have been repeated. As it 
was, they cut off only the Hiyei. To avoid ramming, this old 
ironclad plunged boldly between the Chen-yuen and Ting- 
yuen. She was hit 22 times and had 56 killed and wounded, 
but managed to pull through. 

Before this time the Clwo-yung and Yang-wei on the right 
flank of the Chinese line had crumpled under a heavy cross-fire 
from the flying squadron. These ships had wooden cabins 
on deck outboard, and the whole superstructure soon became 
roaring masses of flames. Both dropped out of line and 
burned to the water's edge. The two* ships on the opposite 
flank had seized an early opportunity to withdraw astern of 
the line, and were now off for Port Arthur under full steam, 
"followed," writes McGiffin, "by a string of Chinese anath- 
emas from our men at the guns." 

The Japanese van turned to port and was thus for some 



308 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



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not in action 



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KWAN6-I, 
PirsjO " 

LAI-YU6N" 



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Chinese ships 

I aco - aso 



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k3<- 



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closer- r»ncd 
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CHEN-YUEN +TINO-YU6N 
Joined byMcruisers escape 
"fce Port "Arthur **■-••' 



&t Sundown 



-M 



BATTUE OF THE YALU, SEPT. 17, ll 



HAMPTON ROADS AND LISSA 309 

time out of action. The main division turned to starboard 
and circled the Chinese rear. Of the 6 Chinese ships left in 
the line, the four smaller seem now to have moved on to 
southward, while both Japanese divisions concentrated on 
the two battleships Chen-yuen and Ting-yuen. These did 
their best to keep head to the enemy, and stood up doggedly, 
returning slowly the fire of the circling cruisers. Tsuboi soon 
turned away to engage the lighter vessels. Finally, at 3.26, 
as the Matsushima closed to about 2000 yards, the Chen-yuen 
hit her fairly with a last remaining 12-inch shell. This one 
blow put Ito's flagship out of action, exploding some ammu- 
nition, killing or wounding 50 or more men, and starting a 
dangerous fire. The Japanese hauled off, while according to 
Chinese accounts the battleships actually followed, but at 4.30 
came again under a severe fire. About 5.30, when the Chinese 
were practically out of ammunition, Ito finally withdrew and 
recalled his van. 

Of the other Chinese ships, the Chi-yuen made a desperate 
attempt to approach the Japanese van and went down at 3.30 
with screws racing in the air. The King-yuen, already on fire, 
was shot to pieces and sunk an hour later by the Yoshino's 
quick-firers. As the sun went down, the Lai-yuen and Kwang- 
ping, with two ships from the river mouth, fell in behind the 
battleships and staggered off towards Port Arthur, unpursued. 
The losses on the two armored ships had been relatively slight 
■ — 56 killed and wounded. The Japanese lost altogether 90 
killed and 204 wounded, chiefly on the Matsushima and Hiyei. 

Though China saved her best ships from the battle, her 
fighting spirit was done for. The battleships were later de- 
stroyed by Japanese torpedo operations after the fall of Wei- 
hai-wei. Her crews had on the whole fought bravely, handi- 
capped as they were by their poor materials and lack of skill. 
For instance, when McGiffin called for volunteers to ex- 
tinguish a fire on the Chen-yuen' s forecastle, swept by enemy 
shells, "men responded heartily and went to what seemed 
to them certain death." It was at this time that the com- 
mander himself, leading the party, was knocked over by a 



310 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

shell explosion and then barely escaped the blast of one of 
his own 1 2-inch guns by rolling through an open hatch and 
falling 8 feet to a pile of debris below. 

In the way of lessons, aside from the obvious ones as to 
the value of training and expert leadership and the necessity 
of eliminating inflammables in ship construction, the battle 
revealed on the one hand the great resisting qualities of the 
armored ship, and on the other hand the offensive value of 
superior gunfire. Admiral Mahan said at the time that "The 
rapid fire gun has just now fairly established its position as, 
the greatest offensive weapon in naval warfare." 1 Another 
authority has noted that, both at Lissa and the Yalu, "The 
winning fleet was worked in divisions, as was the British 
fleet in the Dutch wars and at Trafalgar, and the Japanese 
fleet afterwards at Tsushima." Remarking that experiments 
with this method were made by the British Channel Fleet in 
1904, the writer continues: "The conception grew out of a 
study of Nelson's Memorandum. Its essence was to make 
the fleet flexible in the hands of the admiral, and to enable any 
part to be moved by the shortest line to the position where 
it was most required." 2 

By the Treaty of Shimonoseki (April 17, 1895) which closed 
the war, Japan secured Korea and Southern Manchuria, Port 
Arthur and the Liao-tung Peninsula, Wei-hai-wei and the 
Pescadores Islands. But just as she was about to lay hands 
on these generous fruits of victory, they were snatched out of 
her grasp by the European powers, which began exploiting 
China for themselves. Japan had to> acquiesce and bide her 
time, using her war indemnity and foreign loans to build up 
her fleet. The Yalu thus not only marks the rise of Japan 
as a formidable force in international affairs, but brings us 
to a period of intensified colonial and commercial rivalry in 
the Far East and elsewhere which gave added significance to 
naval power and led to the war of 191 4. 

1 Lessons from the Yalu Fight, Century Magazine, August, 1895, 
p. 630. 
2 Custance, The Ship of the Line in Battle, p. 103. 



HAMPTON ROADS AND LISSA 311 



REFERENCES 

Aside from those already cited see: 
Robert Fulton, Engineer and Artist, H. W. Dickinson, 1913. 
The Story of the Guns, J. E. Tennant, 1864. 
The British Navy, Sir Thomas Brassey, 1884. 
Clowe's History of the Royal Navy, Vol. VII (p. 20, bibliography). 
Naval Development of the io/th Century, N. Barnaby, 1904. 
The Torpedo in Peace and War, F. T. Jane, 1898. 
Submarine Warfare, H. C. Fyfe, 1902. 
The Submarine in War and Peace, Simon Lake, 1918. 
Four Modern Naval Campaigns, Lissa, W. L. Clowes, 1902. 
The Austro-Italian Naval War, Journal of the United Service 

Institution, Vol. XI, pp. I04ff. 



CHAPTER XV 
RIVALRY FOR WORLD POWER 

Even more significant in its relation to sea power than the 
revolution in armaments during the 19th century was the 
extraordinary growth of ocean commerce. The total value 
of the world's import and export trade in 1800 amounted in 
round numbers to 1^2 billion dollars, in 1850 to 4 billion, and 
in 1900 to nearly 24 billion. In other words, during a period 
in which the population of the world was not more than 
tripled, its international exchange of commodities was in- 
creased 1 6- fold. This growth was of course made possible 
largely by progress in manufacturing, increased use of steam 
navigation, and vastly greater output of coal and iron. 1 At 
the end of the Napoleonic wars England was the only great 
commercial and industrial state. At the close of the century, 
though with her colonies she still controlled one-fourth of 
the world's foreign trade, she faced aggressive rivals in the 
field. The United States after her Civil War, and Germany 
after her unification and the Franco-Prussian War, had 
achieved an immense industrial development, opening up re- 
sources in coal and iron that made them formidable competi- 
tors. Germany in particular, a late comer in the colonial field, 
felt that her future lay upon the seas, as a means of securing 
access on favorable terms to world markets and raw materials. 
Other nations also realized that their continued growth and 
prosperity would depend upon commercial expansion. This 
might be accomplished in a measure by cheaper production 
and superior business organization, but could be greatly aided 
by political means — by colonial activity, by securing control 

1 Coal production increased during the century from 11.6 million tons 
to 610 million, and pig iron from half a million tons to 37 million. Fig- 
ures from Day, History of Commerce, Ch. XXVIII. 

312 



RIVALRY FOR WORLD POWER 313 

or special privileges in unexploited areas and backward states, 
by building up a merchant fleet under the national flag. Ob- 
viously, since the seas join the continents and form the great 
highways of trade, this commercial and political expansion 
would give increased importance to naval power. 

Admiral Mahan, an acute political observer as well as 
strategist, summed up the international situation in 1895 
and again in 1897 as " an equilibrium on the [European] Con- 
tinent, and, in connection with the calm thus resulting, an 
immense colonizing movement in which all the great powers 
were concerned." x Later, in 191 1, he noted that colonial rival- 
ries had again been superseded by rivalries within Europe, but 
pointed out that the European tension was itself largely the 
product of activities and ambitions in more distant spheres. 
In fact the international developments of recent times, whether 
in the form of colonial enterprises, armament competition, 
or actual warfare, find a common origin in economic and 
commercial interests. Commerce and quick communications 
have drawn the world into closer unity, yet by a kind of 
paradox have increased the possibilities of conflict. Both by 
their common origin and by their far-reaching consequences, 
it is thus possible to connect the story of naval events from 
the Spanish-American to the World War, and to 1 gather them 
up under the general title, "rivalry for world power." 

I. THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR 

To this rivalry the United States could hardly hope or 
desire to remain always a passive spectator, yet, aside from 
trying to stabilize the western hemisphere by the Monroe 
Doctrine, she cherished down to the year 1898 a policy of 
isolation from world affairs. During the first half of the 
19th century, it is true, her interests were directed outward by 
a flourishing merchant marine. In i860 the American mer- 
chant fleet of 2,500,000 tons was second only to Great 
Britain's and nearly equal to that of all other nations com- 
bined. But its decay had already begun, and continued rap- 

1 Naval Strategy, p. 104. 



314 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

idly. The change from wood to iron construction enabled 
England to build cheaper ships; and American shipping suf- 
fered also from lack of government patronage, diversion of 
capital into more profitable projects of Western development, 
and loss of a third of its tonnage by destruction or shift to 
foreign register during the Civil War. At the outbreak of 
that war 72 per cent of American exports were carried in 
American bottoms; only 9 per cent in 191 3. Thus the United 
States had reached the unsatisfactory condition of a nation 
with a large and rapidly growing foreign commerce and an 
almost non-existent merchant marine. 

This was the situation when the nation was thrust suddenly 
and half unwillingly into the main stream of international 
events by the Spanish-American War. Though this war 
made the United States a world power, commercial or political 
aggrandizement played no part in her entry into the struggle. 
It arose solely from the intolerable conditions created by Span- 
ish misrule in Cuba, and intensified by armed rebellion since 
1895. Whatever slight hope or justification for non-inter- 
vention remained was destroyed by the blowing up of the 
U. S. S. Maine in Havana harbor, February 15, 1898, with 
the loss of 260 of her complement of 354 officers and men. 
Thereafter the United States pushed her preparations for 
war; but the resolution of Congress, April 19, 1898, authoriz- 
ing the President to begin hostilities expressly stated that the 
United States disclaimed any intention to exercise sovereignty 
over Cuba, and after its pacification would "leave the govern- 
ment and control of the island to its people." 

It was at once recognized that the conflict would be pri- 
marily naval, and would be won by the nation that secured 
control of the sea. The paper strength of the two navies left 
little to choose, and led even competent critics like Admiral 
Colomb in England to prophesy a stalemate — a "desultory 
war." Against five new American battleships, the Iowa, Indi- 
ana, Massachusetts, Oregon and Texas, the first four of 10,000 
tons, and the armored cruisers Brooklyn and New York of 
9000 and 8000 tons, Spain could oppose the battleship Pelayo, 
a little better than the Texas, and five armored cruisers, the 



RIVALRY FOR WORLD POWER 315 

Carlos V, Infanta Maria Teresa, Almirante Oquendo, and 
Vizcaya, each of about 7000 tons, and the somewhat larger 
and very able former Italian cruiser Cristobal Colon. Fig- 
ures and statistics, however, give no idea of the actual weak- 
ness of the Spanish navy, handicapped by shiftless naval 
administration, by dependence on foreign sources of supply, 
and by the incompetence and lack of training of personnel. 
Of the squadron that came to Cuba under Admiral Cervera, 
the Colon lacked two io-inch guns for her barbettes, and the 
Vizcaya was so foul under water that with a trial speed of 
i8^4 knots she never made above 13 — Cervera called her a 
"buoy." There was no settled plan of campaign; to Cervera's 
requests for instructions came the ministerial reply that "in 
these moments of international crisis no definite plans can 
be formulated." 1 The despairing letters of the Spanish Ad- 
miral and his subordinates reveal how feeble was the reed 
upon which Spain had to depend for the preservation of her 
colonial empire. The four cruisers and two destroyers that 
sailed from the Cape Verde Islands on April 29 were Spain's 
total force available. The Pelayo and the Carlos V, not yet 
ready, were the only ships of value left behind. 

On the American naval list, in addition to the main units 
already mentioned, there were six monitors of heavy armament 
but indifferent fighting value, a considerable force of small 
cruisers, four converted liners for scouts, and a large number 
of gunboats, converted yachts, etc., which proved useful in 
the Cuban blockade. Of these forces the majority were as- 
sembled in the Atlantic theater of war. The Oregon was on 
the West Coast, and made her famous voyage of 14,700 miles 
around Cape Horn in 79 days, at an average speed of 11.6 
knots, leaving Puget Sound on March 6 and touching at 
Barbados in the West Indies on May 18, just as the Spanish 
fleet was steaming across the Caribbean. The cruise effect, 
tively demonstrated the danger of a divided navy and the 
need of an Isthmian canal. Under Commodore Dewey in 
the Far East were two gunboats and four small cruisers, the 

1 Bermejo to Cervera, April 4, 1898. 



316 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



best of them the fast and heavily armed flagship Olympia, 
of 5800 tons. 

The Battle of Manila Bay 

With this latter force the first blow of the war was struck 
on May 1 in Manila Bay. Dewey, largely through the influ- 
ence of Assistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt, had 




^jCORREGIDOB 

Apr.30-Mzy I. *'-8?.CA_af?ANDE 



APPROACHES TO MANILA 



been appointed to the eastern command the autumn before. 
On reaching his station in January, he took his squadron to 
Hong Kong to be close to the scene of possible hostilities. 
On February 25 he received a despatch from Roosevelt, then 
Acting Secretary : "Keep full of coal. In the event of declara- 
tion of war Spain, your duty will be to see that Spanish 
squadron does not leave the Asiatic coast, and then offensive 
operations in the Philippine Islands." On April 25 came the 
inspiring order : "Proceed at once to Philippine Islands. Com- 
mence operations particularly against the Spanish fleet. You 
must capture vessels or destroy. Use utmost endeavor." The 



RIVALRY FOR WORLD POWER 317 

Commodore had already purchased a collier and a supply ship 
for use in addition to the revenue cutter McCulloch, over- 
hauled his vessels and given them a war coat of slate-gray, 
and made plans for a base at Mirs Bay, 30 miles distant in 
Chinese waters, where he would be less troubled by neutrality 
rules in time of war. On April 22 the Baltimore arrived 
from San Francisco with much-needed ammunition. On the 
27th Consul Williams joined with latest news of preparations 
at Manila, and that afternoon the squadron put to sea. 

On the morning of the 30th it was off Luzon, and two 
ships scouted Subig Bay, which the enemy had left only 24 
hours before. At 12 that night Dewey took his squadron 
in column through the entrance to Manila Bay, just as he 
had steamed past the forts on the Mississippi with Farragut 
35 years before. Only three shots were fired by the guns on 
shore. The thoroughness of Dewey's preparations, the rapid- 
ity of his movements up to this point, and his daring passage 
through a channel which he had reason to believe strongly 
defended by mines and shore batteries are the just titles of his 
fame. The entrance to Manila is indeed 10 miles wide and 
divided into separate channels by the islands Corregidor, 
Caballo, and El Fraile. The less frequented channel chosen 
was, as Dewey rightly judged, too deep for mining except by 
experts. Yet the Spanish had news of his approach the day< 
before; they had 17 guns, including 6 modern rifles, on the 
islands guarding the entrance; they had plenty of gunboats 
that might have been fitted out as torpedo launches for night 
attack. It does not detract from the American officer's ac- 
complishment that he drew no false picture of the obstacles 
with which he had to deal. 

At daybreak next morning, having covered slowly the 24 
miles from the mouth of the bay up to Manila, the American 
ships advanced past the city to attack the Spanish flotilla 
drawn up under the Cavite batteries 6 miles beyond. Here 
was what an American officer described as "a collection of old 
tubs scarcely fit to be called men-of-war." The most service- 
able was Admiral Montojo's flagship Reina Cristina, an un- 
armored cruiser of 3500 tons; the remaining half dozen were 



318 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



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BATTLE OF MANILA, MAY I, 1898 



RIVALRY FOR WORLD POWER 319 

older ships of both wood and iron, some of them not able to get 
under way. They mounted 3 1 guns above 4-inch to the Amer- 
icans' 53. More serious in prospect, though not in reality, was 
the danger from shore batteries and mines. The United States 
vessels approached in column, led by the Olympia, which 
opened fire at 5.40. In the words of Admiral Dewey's report, 
"The squadron maintained a continuous and precise fire at 
ranges varying from 5000 to 2000 yards, countermarching in 
a line approximately parallel to that of the Spanish fleet. The 
enemy's fire was vigorous, but generally ineffective. Three 
runs were made from the eastward and three from the west- 
ward, so that both broadsides were brought to bear." One 
torpedo launch which dashed out was sunk and another driven 
ashore. The Cristina moved out as if to ram, but staggered 
back under the Olympia' s concentrated fire. At 7.35, owing 
to a mistaken report that only 15 rounds of ammunition were 
left for the 5-inch guns, the American squadron retired tem- 
porarily, but renewed action at 11. 16 and ended it an hour 
later, when the batteries were silenced and "every enemy ship 
sunk, burned or deserted." 

As reported by Admiral Montojo, the Spanish lost 381 
men. The American ships were hit only 15 times and had 
7 men slightly injured. Volume and accuracy of gunfire won 
the day. Somewhat extravagant language has been used in 
describing the battle, which, whatever the perils that might 
naturally have been expected, was a most one-sided affair. 
But it is less easy to overpraise Admiral Dewey's energetic 
and aggressive handling of the entire campaign. 

Manila thereafter lay helpless under the guns of the squad- 
ron, and upon the arrival and landing of troops surrendered 
on August 13, after a merely formal defense. In the interim, 
Spain sent out a relief force under Admiral Camara consist- 
ing of the Pelaya, Carlos V and other smaller units, before 
encountering which Dewey planned to leave Manila and await 
the arrival of two monitors then on their way from San 
Francisco. After getting through the Suez Canal, Camara 
was brought back (July 8) by an American threat against the 
coast of Spain. 



320 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

Soon after the battle a number of foreign warships congre- 
gated at Manila, including 5 German ships under Admiral von 
Diedrichs, a force superior to Dewey's, and apparently bent 
on learning by persistent contravention all the rules of a 
blockaded port. The message finally sent to the German 
Admiral is reticently described by Dewey himself, but is said 
to have been to the effect that, if the German admiral wanted 
a fight, "he could have it right now." On the day of the 
surrender of Manila the British and the Japanese ships in the 
harbor took a position between the American and the German 
squadrons. This was just after the seizure of Kiao-chau, at 
a time when Germany was vigorously pushing out for "a 
place in the sun." But for the American commander's quiet 
yet firm stand, with British support, the United States might 
have encountered more serious complications in taking over 
127,000 square miles of archipelago in the eastern world, with 
important trade interests, a lively insurrection, and a popula- 
tion of 7 million. 

The Santiago Campaign 

In the Atlantic, where it was the American policy not to 
carry their offensive beyond Spain's West Indies possessions, 
events moved more slowly. Rear Admiral Sicard, in com- 
mand of the North Atlantic squadron based on K*ey West, 
was retired in March for physical disability and succeeded 
by William T. Sampson, who stepped up naturally from senior 
captain in the squadron and was already distinguished for 
executive ability and knowledge of ordnance. Sampson's first 
proposal was, in the event of hostilities, a bombardment of 
Havana, a plan approved by all his captains and showing a 
confidence inspired perhaps by coastal operations in the Civil 
War; but this was properly vetoed by the Department on the 
ground that no ships should be risked against shore defenses 
until they had struck at the enemy's naval force and secured 
control of the sea. An earlier memorandum from Secretary 
Long, outlining plans for a blockade oi Cuba, had been based 



RIVALRY FOR WORLD POWER 321 

on suggestions from Rear Admiral (then Captain) Mahan, 1 
and his strategic insight may have guided this decision. On 
April 22, Sampson, now acting rear admiral, placed his force 
off Havana and established a close blockade over ioo miles 
on the northern coast. 

The problem for American strategy was now Cervera's 
"fleet in being," — inferior in force but a menace until de- 
stroyed or put out of action — which, as before stated, left 
the Cape Verde Islands on April 29, for a destination un- 
known. A bombardment of cities on the American coast or a 
raid on the North Atlantic trade routes was within the realm 
of possibilities. Difficulties of coaling and an inveterate tend- 
ency to leave the initiative to the enemy decided the Spanish 
against such a project. But its bare possibility set the whole 
east coast in a panic, which has been much ridiculed, but 
which arose naturally enough from a complete lack of in- 
struction in naval matters and from lack of a sensible control 
of the press. The result was an unfortunate division of the 
fleet. A so-called Flying squadron under Commodore Schley, 
consisting of the Brooklyn, Massachusetts, Texas, and 3 small 
cruisers, was held at Hampton Roads; whereas, if not thus 
employed, these ships might have blockaded the south side of 
Cuba from the beginning of the war. A northern patrol 
squadron, of vessels not of much use for this or any other 
purpose, was also organized to guard the coast from Hampton 
Roads north. 

On May 4, with Cervera still at large, Sampson lifted 
his guard of Havana — unwisely in the opinion of Mahan — 
and took his best ships, the New York, Indiana, Iowa, and 
two monitors, to reconnoiter San Juan, Porto Rico, where it 
was thought the missing fleet might first appear. Just as he 
was bombarding San Juan, on the morning of May 12, the 
Navy Department received a cable from Martinique announc- 
ing Cervera's arrival there. Havana and Cienfuegos (on the 
south side of Cuba and connected with Havana by rail) were 
considered the only two ports where the Spanish fleet could 
be of value to the forces on the island; and from these two 

1 Goode, With Sampson Through the War, p. 19. 



322 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

ports both American squadrons were at this time a thousand 
miles away. Schley hastened southward, left Key West on 
the 19th, and was off Cienfuegos by daylight on the 21st. It 
was fairly quick work ; but had the Spanish fleet moved thither 
at its usual speed of 6 knots from its last stopping-place, it 
would have got there first by at least 12 hours. The Spanish 
admiral, finding no coal at Martinique, had left a crippled 
destroyer there and moved on to the Dutch island of Curacao, 
where on the 14th and 15th he secured with difficulty about 
500 tons of fuel. Thence, in all anxiety, he made straight 
for the nearest possible refuge, Santiago, where he put in 
at daybreak on the 19th and was soon receiving congratula- 
tions on the completion of a successful cruise. 

By the next day Sampson, having hurried back from San 
Juan and coaled, was again in force off Havana. There he 
received news of Cervera's arrival in Santiago. Since 
Havana could not be uncovered, he sent instructions to 
Schley — at first discretionary, and then, as the reports were 
confirmed, more imperative — to blockade the eastern port. 
Though the commander of the Flying Squadron received the 
latter orders on the 23d, he had seen smoke in Cienfuegos har- 
bor and still believed he had Cervera cornered there. Accord- 
ingly he delayed until evening of the next day. Then, after 
reaching Santiago, he cabled on the 27th that he was return- 
ing to Key West to coal, though he had a collier with him 
and stringent orders to the contrary; and it was not until the 
29th that he actually established the Santiago blackade. Samp- 
son, his superior in command (though not his senior in the 
captains' list), later declared his conduct at this time "rep- 
rehensible" 1 — possibly too harsh a term, for the circumstances 
tried judgment and leadership in the extreme. Cervera found 
Santiago destitute of facilities for refitting. Yet the fact 

1 Letter to Secretary, July 10, 1898, Sampson-Schley Documents, p. 
136: "Had the commodore left his station atthat time he probably would 
have been court-martialed, so plain was his duty. . . . This reprehen- 
sible conduct I cannot separate from his subsequent conduct, and for 
this reason I ask you to do him ample justice on this occasion." A court 
of inquiry later decided that Commodore Schley's service up to June 1 
was characterized by "vacillation, dilatoriness, and lack of enterprise." 



RIVALRY FOR WORLD POWER 323 




324 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

remains that he had 10 days in which to coal and get away. 
"We cannot," writes Admiral Mahan, "expect ever again to 
have an enemy so inept as Spain showed herself to be." 1 

The "bottling up" of Cervera cleared the situation, and the 
navy could now concentrate on a task still difficult but well 
defined. Sampson brought his force to Santiago on June I, 
and assumed immediate command. A close blockade was 
instituted such as against adequate torpedo and mine defenses 
would have been highly dangerous even at that day. Three 
picket launches were placed about a mile off shore, three 
small vessels a mile further out, and beyond these the 5 or 6 
major units, under steam and headed toward the entrance in a 
carefully planned disposition to meet any attempt at escape. 
At night a battleship stood in and played its searchlight directly 
on the mouth of the channel. The latter was six miles in 
length, with difficult turns, and at the narrowest point only 
300 feet wide. Lieut. Hobson's gallant effort on June 3 to 
sink the collier Merrimac across the channel had made its 
navigation even more difficult, though the vessel did not lie 
athwart-stream. Mine barriers and batteries on the high hills 
at the harbor mouth prevented forcing the channel, but the 
guns were mostly of ancient type and failed to keep the ships 
at a distance. On the other hand, bombardments from the 
latter did little more than to afford useful target practice. 

The despatch of troops to Santiago was at once decided 
upon, and the subsequent campaign, if it could be fully studied, 
would afford interesting lessons in combined operations. On 
June 22, 16,000 men under General Shafter landed at Dai- 
quiri, 15 miles east of Santiago, in 52 boats provided by the 
fleet, though the War Department had previously stated that 
the general would "land his own troops." 2 "It was done in 
a scramble," writes Col. Roosevelt; and there was great 
difficulty in getting the skippers of army transports to bring 
their vessels within reasonable distance of the shore. Since 
the sole object of the campaign was to get at and destroy the 
enemy fleet, the navy fully expected and understood that the 

1 Lessons of the War with Spain, p. 157. 

2 Goode, With Sampson Through the War, p. 182. 



RIVALRY FOR WORLD POWER 325 

army would make its first aim to advance along the coast and 
capture the batteries at the entrance, so that the mines could 
be lifted and the harbor forced. Army authorities declare 
this would have involved division of forces on both sides of 
the channel and impossibilities of transportation due to lack 
of roads. But these difficulties applied also in a measure to 
the defenders, and might perhaps have been surmounted by 
full use of naval aid. 

Instead, the army set out with some confidence to capture 
the city itself. El Caney and San Juan Hill were seized on July 
2 after a bloody struggle in which the Spanish stuck to their 
defenses heroically and inflicted 1600 casualties. By their own 
figures the Spanish on this day had only 1700 men engaged, 
though there were 36,500 Spanish troops in the province and 
12,000 near at hand. In considerable discouragement, Shafter 
now spoke of withdrawal, and urged Sampson "immediately 
to force the entrance" 1 — in spite of the fact that the main 
purpose in sending troops had been to avoid this very measure. 
In view of threatening foreign complications and the impos- 
sibility .of replacing battleships, it was imperative not to risk 
them against mines. 

Food conditions were serious in Santiago, but Cervera 
was absolutely determined not to assume responsibility for 
taking his fleet out to what he regarded as certain slaughter' 
A night sortie, with ships issuing one by one out of an intricate 
channel into the glare of searchlights, he declared more diffi- 
cult than one by day. Fortunately for the Americans, in 
view of the situation ashore, the decision was taken out of 
his hands, and Governor General Blanco from Havana perem- 
torily ordered him to put to sea. The time of his exit, Sun- 
day morning, July 3, was luckily chosen, for Sampson, in the 
New York, was 10 miles to eastward on his way to a confer- 
ence with Shafter, and the Massachusetts was at Guantanamo 
for coal. The flagship Maria Teresa led out at 9.35, followed 
10 minutes later by the Vizcaya, and then by the Colon, 
Oquendo, and the destroyers Furor and Pluton, each turning 
westward at top speed. 

1 Ibid., p. 190. 



326 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



Simultaneously the big blockaders crowded toward them 
and opened a heavy fire, while stokers shoveled desperately 
below to get up steam. To the surprise of other vessels, 
Schley's ship, the Brooklyn, after heading towards the en- 
trance, swung round, not with the enemy, but to starboard, 
just sliding past the Texas' bow. This much discussed ma- 
neuver Schley afterward explained as made to avoid blanketing 
the fire of the rest of the squadron. The Oregon, which 
throughout the blockade had kept plenty of steam, "rushed past 




BATTLE OF SANTIAGO, JULY 3, li 



the Iowa," in the words of Captain Robley Evans, "like an ex- 
press train," in a cloud of smoke lighted by vicious flashes 
from her guns. In ten minutes the Maria Teresa turned for 
shore, hit by 30 projectiles, her decks, encumbered with wood- 
work, bursting into masses of flame. The concentration upon 
her at the beginning had shifted to the Oquendo in the rear, 
which ran ashore with guns silenced 5 minutes after the leader. 
Shortly before 11, the 'Vizcaya, with a torpedo ready in 
one of her bow tubes, turned towards the Brooklyn, which had 
kept in the lead of the American ships. A shell hitting 
squarely in the Vizcaya' s bow caused a heavy explosion and 
sheered her away, the guns of the Brooklyn, Oregon, and 



RIVALRY FOR WORLD POWER 327 

Iowa bearing on her as she ran towards the beach. The 
Colon, with a trial speed of 20 knots, and 6 miles ahead of the 
Brooklyn and Oregon, appeared to stand a good chance of 
getting finally away. The New York, rushing back toward the 
battle, was still well astern. But the Colon's speed, which had 
averaged 13.7 knots, slackened as her fire-room force played 
out; and shortly after 1 p.m. she ran shoreward, opened 
her Kingston valves, and went down after surrender. She 
had been hit only 6 times. 

In the first stage of the fight the little yacht Gloucester, 
under Lieutenant Commander Wainwright, had dashed pluck- 
ily upon the two destroyers, which were also under fire from 
the secondary batteries of the big ships. The Furor was sunk 
and the Pint on driven ashore. 

There is hardly a record in naval history of such complete 
destruction. Of 2300 Spaniards, 1800 were rescued as pris- 
oners from the burning wrecks or from the Cuban guerillas on 
shore, 350 met their death, and the rest escaped towards San- 
tiago. The American loss consisted of one man killed and one 
wounded on the Brooklyn. This ship, which owing to its lead- 
ing position had been the chief enemy target, received 20 hits 
from shells or fragments, and the other vessels altogether about 
as many more. An examination of the half-sunken and 
fire-scarred Spanish hulks showed 42 hits out of 1300 rounds 
from the American main batteries, or 3.2 per cent and 73 from 
secondary batteries. Probably these figures should be doubled 
to give the actual number, but even so they revealed the need 
of improvement in gunnery. 

Sampson was right when he stated earlier in the campaign 
that the destruction of the Spanish fleet would end the war. 
Santiago surrendered a fortnight later without further fight- 
ing. An expeditionary force under General Miles made an 
easy conquest of Puerto Rico. On August 12, a protocol of 
peace was signed, by the terms of which the United States 
took over Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines (upon 
payment of 20 million dollars), and Cuba became independent 
under American protection. The war greatly strengthened 
the position of the United States in the Caribbean, and gave 



328 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

her new interests and responsibilities in the Pacific. In the 
possession of distant dependencies the nation found a new 
motive for increased naval protection and for more active 
concern in international affairs. 



2. THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR 

At the time when the United States acquired the Philip* 
pines, the Far East was a storm center of international dis- 
turbance.' Russia, with the support of Germany and France, 
had, as already noted, combined to prevent Japan from fully 
exploiting her victory over China. The latter country, how- 
ever, had every appearance of a melon ripe for cutting; and 
under guise of security for loans, indemnity for injuries, rail- 
road and treaty-port concessions, and special spheres of influ- 
ence, each European nation endeavored to mark out its pros- 
pective share. Russia, in return for protecting China against 
Japan, gained a short-cut for her Siberian Railway across 
Northern Manchuria, with rail and mining concessions in that 
province and prospects of getting hold of both Port Arthur and 
Kiao-chau. But, at an opportune moment for Germany, two- 
German missionaries were murdered in 1897 by Chinese ban- 
dits. Germany at once seized Kiao-chau, and in March, 1898, 
extorted a 99-year lease of the port, with exclusive develop- 
ment privileges throughout the peninsula of Shantung. "The 
German Michael," as Kaiser Wilhelm said at a banquet on the 
departure of his fleet to the East, had "firmly planted his 
shield upon Chinese soil" ; and "the gospel of His Majesty's 
hallowed person," as Admiral Prince Heinrich asserted in 
reply, "was to be preached to every one who will hear it and 
also to those who do not wish to hear." "Our establishment 
on the coast of China," writes ex-Chancellor von Biilow, "was 
in direct and immediate connection with the progress of the 
fleet, and a first step into the field of world politics . . . giv- 
ing us a place in the sun in Eastern Asia." 1 

Thus forestalled at Kiao-chau, Russia at once pushed 

1 From London Spectator, Dec. 26, 1897, quoted in Morse, Interna- 
tional Relations of the Chinese Empire, Vol. Ill, p. 108. 



RIVALRY FOR WORLD POWER 329 

through a 2 5 -year lease of Port Arthur, and proceeded to 
strengthen it as a fortified port and naval base. England, 
though preoccupied with the Boer War, took Wei-hai-wai as 
a precautionary measure, "for as long a time as Port Arthur 




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shall remain a possession of Russia." x France secured a new 
base in southern China on Kwang-chau Bay, and Italy tried 
likewise but failed. Aroused by the foreign menace, the feel- 
ing of the Chinese masses burst forth in the summer of 1900 
in the massacres and uprisings known as the Boxer Rebel- 
lion. In the combined expedition to relieve the legations at 

1 /&«/., Ill, 118. 



330 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

Peking Japanese troops displayed superior deftness, discipline, 
and endurance, and gained confidence in their ability to cope 
with the armies of European powers. 

In the period following, Germany in Shantung and Russia 
in Manchuria pursued steadily their policy of exploitation. 
Against it, the American Secretary of State John Hay ad- 
vanced the policy of the Open Door, "to preserve Chinese ter- 
ritorial and administrative entity . . . and safeguard for 
the world the principle of equal and impartial trade with all 
parts of the Chinese Empire." 1 To this the powers gave 
merely lip-service, realizing that her fixed policy of isolation 
would restrain the United States from either diplomatic com- 
binations or force. "The open hand," wrote Hay in dis- 
couragement, "will not be so convincing to the poor devils of 
Chinese as the raised club," 2 nor was it so efficacious in deal- 
ing with other nations concerned. Japan, however, had 
strained every energy to build up her army and navy for a 
conflict that seemed inevitable, and was ready to back her 
opposition to European advances by force if need be. In 
1902 she protected herself against a combination of foes by 
defensive alliance with England. She demanded that Russia 
take her troops out of Manchuria and recognize Japanese 
predominance in Korea, Russia hoped to forestall hostilities 
until she could further strengthen her army and fleet in the 
East, but when the transfer of ships reached the danger point, 
Japan declared war, February 8, 1904, and struck viciously 
that same night. 

As in the Spanish- American War, control of the sea was 
vital, since Japan must depend upon it to move her troops to 
the continental theater of war. Nor could she hold her army 
passive while awaiting the issue of a struggle for sea control. 
Delay would put a greater relative strain on her finances, and 
give Russia, handicapped by long communications over the 
single-track Siberian Railway, a better chance to mass in the 
East her troops and supplies. Japan's plan was therefore to 
strike hard for naval advantage, but to begin at once, in any 

1 Note to the European Powers, July 3, 1900. 
"Thayer, Life of Hay, II, 369. 



RIVALRY FOR WORLD POWER 331 

event, the movement of troops overseas. At the outbreak of 
war her fleet of 6 battleships and 6 armored cruisers, with 
light cruiser and destroyer flotillas, was assembled at Sasebo 
near the Straits of Tsushima, thoroughly organized for fight- 
ing and imbued with the spirit of war. Japan had an appre- 
ciable naval superiority, but was handicapped by the task of 
protecting her transports and by the necessity — which she 
felt keenly — of avoiding losses in battle which would leave 
her helpless upon the possible advent of Russia's Baltic re- 
serves. 

Russia's main naval strength in the East consisted of 7 
battleships and 3 armored cruisers, presenting a combined 
broadside of 100 guns against Japan's 124. The support of 
the Black Sea fleet was denied by the attitude of England, 
which would prevent violation of the agreement restricting it 
from passing the Dardanelles. The Baltic fleet, however, was 
an important though distant reserve force, a detachment from 
which was actually in the Red Sea on its way east at the 
outbreak of war. 

Just as clearly as it was Japan's policy to force the fighting 
on land, so it should have been Russia's to prevent Japan's 
movement of troops by aggressive action at sea. This called 
for concentration of force and concentration of purpose. But 
neither was evident in the Russian plan of campaign, which 
betrayed confusion of thought and a traditional leaning to- 
ward the defensive — acceptance on the one hand of what has 
been called "fortress fleet" doctrine, that fleets exist to pro- 
tect bases and can serve this purpose by being shut up in 
them; and on the other hand of exaggerated "fleet in being" 
theory, that the mere presence of the Russian fleet, though 
inactive, would prevent Japan's use of the sea. Thus in Octo- 
ber, 1903, Wit j eft, chief of the Port Arthur naval staff, de- 
clared that a landing of Japanese troops either in the Liao- 
tung or the Korean Gulf was "impossible so long as our fleet is 
not destroyed." Just as Russia's total force was divided 
between east and west, so her eastern force was divided be- 
tween Vladivostok and Port Arthur, with the Japanese in 
central position between. Three armored cruisers were in 



332 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

the northern port, and 7 battleships in the other; and all 
Russia's efforts after war broke out were vainly directed to- 
ward remedying this faulty disposition before it began. The 
whole Russian fleet in the East, moreover, was, it is said, 
badly demoralized and unready for war, owing chiefly to 
bureaucratic corruption and to the fact that not merely its 
strategical direction but its actual command was vested in 
the Viceroy, Alexieff, with headquarters on shore. 

Operations Around Port Arthur 

On January 3, 1904, Japan presented practically an ultima- 
tum; on February 6 broke off diplomatic relations; on Feb- 
ruary 8 declared war; and on the same night — just as the 
Czar was discussing with his council what should be done — 
she delivered her first blow. By extraordinary laxity, though 
the diplomatic rupture was known, the Port Arthur squadron 
remained in the outer anchorage, "with all lights burning, 
without torpedo nets out, and without any guard vessels." 1 
Ten Japanese destroyers attacked at close quarters, fired 18 
torpedoes, and put the battleship Tsarevitch and two cruisers 
out of action for two months. It was only poor torpedo 
work, apparently, that saved the whole fleet from destruction. 
A Russian light cruiser left isolated at Chemulpo was de- 
stroyed the next day. The transportation of troops to Korea 
and Southern Manchuria was at once begun. Though not 
locked in by close blockade, and not seriously injured by the 
frequent Japanese raids, bombardments, and efforts to block 
the harbor entrance, the Port Arthur squadron made no move 
to interfere. 

Both fleets suffered from mines. Vice Admiral Makaroff, 
Russia's foremost naval leader, who took command at Port 
Arthur in March, went down with the Petropaziosk on April 
13, when his ship struck a mine laid by the Japanese. On 
May 14, on the other hand, the Russian mine-layer Amur 
slipped out in a fog, spread her mines in the usual path of 
Japanese vessels off the port, and thus on the same day sank 

1 Semenoff, Rasplata, p. 45. 



RIVALRY FOR WORLD POWER 333 



two of their best ships, the Hatsuse and Yashima. Mining, 
mine-sweeping, an uneventful Russian sortie on June 23, 
progress of Japanese land forces down the peninsula and 
close investment of Port Arthur — this was the course of 
events down to the final effort of the Russian squadron on 
August 10. 

By this time Japanese siege guns were actually reaching 





X' %J\ ■■--■■ %~z ELE £f r! 'K ,c CUFF 



HARBOR OF PORT ARTHUR 



ships in the harbor. Action of any kind, especially if it in- 
volved some injury to the enemy navy, was better than stay- 
ing to be shot to pieces from the shore. Yet Makaroff's suc- 
cessor, Witjeft, painfully and consciously unequal to his 
responsibilities, still opposed an exit, and left port only upon 
imperative orders from above. Scarcely was the fleet an 
hour outside when Togo appeared on the scene. The forces 
in the Battle of August 10 consisted of 6 Russian battleships 1 
and 4 cruisers, against 6 Japanese armored vessels and 9 
cruisers; the combined large-caliber broadsides of the armored 



334 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

ships being 73 to 52, and of the cruisers 55 to 21, in favor 
of Togo's squadron. In spite of this superiority in arma- 
ment, and of fully a knot in speed, Togo hesitated to close 
to decisive range. Five hours or more of complicated maneu- 
vering ensued, during which both squadrons kept at "long 
bowls," now passing each other, now defiling across van or 
rear, without marked advantage for either side. 

At last, at 5.40 p.m., the Japanese got in a lucky blow. 
Two 12-inch shells struck the flagship Tsarevitch, killing Ad- 
miral Wit j eft, jamming the helm to starboard, and thus serv- 
ing to throw the whole Russian line into confusion. Togo 
now closed to 3000 yards, but growing darkness enabled his 
quarry to escape. The battle in fact was less one-sided than 
the later engagement at Tsushima. On both sides the per- 
centage of hits was low, about 1% for the Russians and 6 or 
7% for their opponents. Togo's flagship Mikasa was hit 30 
times and lost 125 men; the total Japanese loss was about half 
that of the enemy — 236 to 478. 

Much might still have been gained, in view of the future 
coming of the Baltic fleet, had the Russians still persisted in 
pressing onward for Vladivostok; but owing to loss of their 
leader and ignorance of the general plan, they scattered. The 
cruiser Novik was caught and sunk, another cruiser was in- 
terned at Shanghai, a third at Saigon, and the Tsarevitch at 
Kiao-chau. The rest, including 5 of the 6 battleships, fled 
back into the Port Arthur death-trap. Largely in order to 
complete their destruction, the Japanese sacrificed 60,000 
men in desperate assaults on the fortress, which surrendered 
January 2, 1905. As at Santiago, the necessity of saving 
battleships, less easily replaced, led the Japanese to the cheaper 
expenditure of men. 

On news of the Port Arthur sortie, the Vladivostok squad- 
ron, which hitherto had made only a few more or less futile 
raids on Japanese shipping, advanced toward Tsushima 
Straits, and met there at dawn of August 14 a slightly su- 
perior force of 4 cruisers under Kamimura. The better 
shooting of the Japanese soon drove the slowest Russian ship, 
the Rwik, out of line; the other two, after a plucky fight, 



RIVALRY FOR WORLD POWER 335 

managed to get away, with hulls and funnels riddled by enemy 
shells. 

The complete annulment of Russia's eastern fleet in this first 
stage of hostilities had enabled Japan to profit fully by her 
easier communications to the scene of war. Its final destruc- 
tion with the fall of Port Arthur gave assurance of victory. 
The decisive battle of Mukden was fought in March, 1905. 
Close to their bases, trained to the last degree, inspired by 
success, the Japanese navy could now face with confidence the 
approach of Russia's last fleet. 

Rojdestvensky' s Cruise 

After a series of accidents and delays, the Baltic fleet under 
Admiral Rojdestvensky — 8 battleships, 5 cruisers, 8 destroy- 
ers, and numerous auxiliaries — left Libau Oct. 18, 1904, on its 
18,000-mile cruise. Off the Dogger Bank in the North Sea, 
the ships fired into English trawlers under the impression 
that they were enemy torpedo craft, and thus nearly stirred 
England to war. Off Tangier some of the lighter vessels 
separated to pass by way of Suez, and a third division from 
Russia followed a little later by the same route. Hamburg- 
American colliers helped Rojdestvensky solve his logistical 
problem on the long voyage round Africa, and German au- 
thorities stretched neutrality rules upon his arrival in Wahl- 
fish Bay, for the engrossment of Russia in eastern adventures 
was cheerfully encouraged by the neighbor on her southern 
frontier. France also did her best to be of service to the fleet 
of her ally, though she had "paired off" with England to re- 
main neutral in the war. 

With the reunion of the Russian divisions at Nossi Be, 
Madagascar, January 9, 1905, came news of the fall of Port 
Arthur. The home government now concluded to despatch 
the fag-ends of its navy, though Rojdestvensky would have 
preferred to push ahead without waiting for such "superflu- 
ous encumbrances" to join. Ships, as his staff officer Semen- 
off afterward wrote, were needed, but not "old flatirons and 



336 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

galoshes" ; guns, but not "holes surrounded by iron." * After 
a tedious 10 weeks' delay in tropical waters, the fleet moved on 
to French Indo-China, where, after another month of waiting, 
the last division under Nebogatoff finally joined — a slow old 
battleship, 3 coast defense ironclads, and a cruiser. Upon these, 
Rojdestvensky's officers vented their vocabulary of invective, 
in which "war junk" and "auto-sinkers" were favorite terms. 

Having already accomplished almost the impossible, the ar- 
mada of 50 units on May 14 set forth on the last stage of its 
extraordinary cruise. Of three possible routes to Vladivostok 
• — through the Tsugaru Strait between Nippon and Yezo, 
through the Strait of La Perouse north of Yezo, or through 
the Straits of Tsushima — the first was ruled out as too diffi- 
cult of navigation; the second, because it would involve coal- 
ing off the coast of Japan. Tsushima remained. To avoid 
torpedo attack, the Russian admiral planned to pass the straits 
by day, and fully expected battle. But the hope lingered in 
his mind that fog or heavy weather might enable him to pass 
unscathed. He had been informed that owing to traffic con- 
ditions on the Siberian railway, he could get nothing at Vladi- 
vostok in the way of supplies. Hence, as a compromise meas- 
ure which weakened fighting efficiency, he took along 3 auxil- 
iary steamers, a repair ship, 2 tugs, and 2 hospital ships, the 
rest of the train on May 25 entering Shanghai ; and he so filled 
the bunkers and piled even the decks with fuel, according to 
Nebogatoff's later testimony, that they went into- action bur- 
dened with coal for 3,000 miles. 2 

The main Russian fighting force entered the battle in three 
divisions of 4 ships each: (1) the Suvaroif (flagship), Alex- 
ander III, Borodino and Orel, each a new battleship of about 
13,600 tons; (2) the Osdiabya, a slightly smaller battleship, 
and three armored cruisers; (3) Nebogatoff's division as 
given above, with the exception of the cruiser. Then there 
was a squadron of 4 smaller cruisers, 4 other cruisers as scouts, 
and 9 destroyers. The Japanese engaged in two main divisions 
of 6 ships each (4 battleships and 8 armored cruisers), backed 

1 Rasplata, p. 426. 

8 Mahan, Naval Strategy, p. 412. 



RIVALRY FOR WORLD POWER 337 




338 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



by four light cruiser divisions of 4 ships each. The Russian 
line had the advantage in heavy ordnance, as will appear from 
the following table, but this was more than compensated for by 
the enemy's superiority in 8-inch guns and quick-firers, which 
covered the Russians with an overwhelming rain of shells. Of 
guns in broadside, the Japanese ships-of-the-line had 127 to 
98 ; and the cruisers 89 to 43. 





Ships 


Main Batteries 


Q.F. 




12" 


10" 


9" 


8" 


6" 


4-7" 


Japan 


12 
12 


16 
26 


1 

is 


4 


30 
3 


160 
90 




Russia 


20 







On the basis of these figures, and the 50% superiority of 
the Japanese in speed, the issue could hardly be in doubt. Ad- 
miral Togo, moreover, had commanded his fleet in peace and 
war for 8 years, and had veteran subordinates on whom he 
could depend to lead their divisions independently yet in co- 
ordination with the general plan. Constant training and target 
practice had brought his crews to a high degree of skill. The 
Japanese shells were also superior, with fuses that detonated 
their charges on the slightest contact with an explosive force 
like that of mines. Between the enemy and their base, the 
Japanese could wait quietly in home waters, while the Russian 
fleet was worn out by its eight months' cruise. At best, the 
latter was a heterogeneous assemblage of new ships hastily 
completed and old ships indifferently put in repair, which since 
Nebogatoff joined had had but one opportunity for maneuvers 
and had operated as a unit for only 13 days. 

On the night of May 26-27, as the Russian ships approached 
Tsushima through mist and darkness. Half the officers and 
men were at their posts, while the rest slept beside the guns. 
Fragments of wireless messages — "Last night" . . . "noth- 
ing" . . . "eleven lights" . . . "but not in line" — re- 



RIVALRY FOR WORLD POWER 339 

vealed enemy patrols in the waters beyond. Semen- 
off on the Suvaroif describes vividly "the tall, somewhat bent 
figure of the Admiral on the side of the bridge, the wrinkled 
face of the man at the wheel stooping over the compass, the 
guns' crews chilled at their posts." In the brightly lighted 
engine-rooms, "life and movement was visible on all sides; 
men were nimbly running up and down ladders ; there was a 
tinkling of bells and buzzing of voices; orders were being 
transmitted loudly; but, on looking more intently, the tension 
and anxiety — that same peculiar frame of mind so noticeable 
on deck — could also be observed." 1 

The Battle of Tsushima 

At dawn (4.45) the Japanese scout Sinano Maru, which 
for an hour or more had been following in the darkness, made 
them out clearly and communicated the intelligence at once to 
Togo in his base at Masampho Bay, on the Korean side of the 
straits, and to the cruiser divisions off the Tsushima Islands. 
This was apparently the first definite news that Togo had re- 
ceived for several days, and the fact suggests that his scouting 
arrangements were not above criticism, for it took fast steam- 
ing to get to the straits by noon. Cruiser divisions were soon 
circling towards the Russians through the mist and darting as 
swiftly away, first the 5th and 6th under Takeomi and Togo 
(son of the admiral), then the 3d under Dewa, all reporting 
the movements of the enemy fleet and shepherding it till the 
final action began. Troubled by their activity, Rojdestvensky 
made several shifts of formation, first placing his 1st and 2d 
divisions in one long column ahead of the 3d, then at 11.20 
throwing the 1st division again to starboard, while the cruis- 
ers protected the auxiliaries which were steaming between 
the lines in the rear. 

This was the disposition when, shortly after one o'clock, the 

Japanese main divisions appeared to northward about 7 miles 

distant, steaming on a westerly course across the enemy's bows. 

Since morning Togo had covered a distance of 90 miles. From 

x The Battle of Tsushima, p. 28. 



340 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



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BATTLE OF TSUSHIMA, MAY 27, IQ05 

I Division (Togo) II Division (Kamimura) 

Mikasa, B.S. Idzumo 

Shikishima, B.S. Iwati 

Asahi, B.S. Adzumo 

Fuji, B.S. Asaina 

Nisohin, A.C. Tokiwa 

Kasuga Yakumo 

Russians 

I Division II Division 

Suvaroff Ossliabya (flag) 

Alexander III 

Borodino III Division 

Orel 

his signal yards fluttered the stirring message : "The fate of 
the empire depends upon to-day's battle. Let every man do 
his utmost" Ordering all his cruisers to circle to the Russian 
rear, and striking himself for their left flank, which at the 
moment was the weaker, Togo first turned southward as if 
to pass on opposite courses, and then at about two o'clock led his 
two divisions around to east-northeast, so as to "cross the 
T" upon the head of the enemy line. 



RIVALRY FOR WORLD POWER 341 

Just as Togo's flagship Mikasa straightened on her new 
course, nearly north of the Suvaroff, and 6400 yards distant, 
the Suvaroff opened fire. It has been suggested that at this 
critical moment the Russian admiral should have closed with 
the enemy, or, leading his ships on a northwesterly course, laid 
his starboard broadsides on the knuckle formed by the Japa- 
ness turn. But the position of the enemy cruisers and de- 
stroyers, and worry over his transports, guided his movements. 
Moreover, he had not yet completed an awkardly executed ma- 
neuver to get his ships back into single column with the 1st 
division ahead. The Ossliabya and other ships of the 2d divi- 
sion were thrown into confusion, and forced to slow down and 
even stop engines. Under these difficulties, the Suvaroff 
sheered more to eastward. As they completed their turn the 
Japanese secured a "capping" position and could concentrate 
on the leading ships of both the 1st and the 26. Russian divi- 
sions, 4 ships on the Suvaroff and 7 on the Ossliabya. Under 
this terrible fire the Ossliabya went down, the first modern 
battleship (in the narrow sense of the word) ever sunk by 
gunfire, and the Suvaroff a few moments later fell out of line, 
torn by shells, her forward funnel down, and steering gear 
jammed. "She was so battered/' wrote a Japanese observer, 
"that scarcely any one would have taken her for a ship." 

With an advantage in speed of 15 knots to 9, the Japanese 
drew ahead. The Alexander, followed by other Russian ships 
in much confusion, about three o'clock made an efTort to pass 
northward across the enemy rear, but they were countered by 
the Japanese first division turning west together and the 26. 
division in succession at 3.10. The first and decisive phase of 
the action thus ended. Both fleets eventually resumed easterly 
and then southerly courses, for considerable periods complete- 
ly lost to each other in smoke and haze. 

Plunging through heavy seas from the southwest, the Japa- 
nese cruisers had in the meantime punished the Russian rear 
less severely than might have been expected. Two transports 
went down in flames, two cruisers were badly damaged, and 
the high-sided ex-German liner Ural was punctured with shells. 
On the other hand, Dewa's flagship Kasagi was driven to port 



342 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

with a bad hole under water, and Togo's old ship Naniwa 
Kan had to cease action for repairs. Hits and losses in fact 
were considerable in both the main and the cruiser divisions 
of the Japanese, their total casualties numbering 465. Late in 
the afternoon the Russian destroyer Buiny came up to the 
wreck of the Suvaroff, and lurched alongside long enough for 
Rojdestvensky, wounded and almost unconscious, to be prac- 
tically thrown on board. He was captured with the destroyer 
next day. In spite of her injuries, the Suvaroff held off a 
swarm of cruisers and destroyers until at last torpedoed at 
7.20 p. m. 

The Russian battleships had meanwhile described a large 
circle to southward, and at 5 p. m. were again steaming north, 
accompanied by some of their cruisers and train. Attacked 
once more between 6 and 7 o'clock, and almost incapable of 
defense, the Alexander III and Borodino went down, making 
4 ships lost out of the 5 new vessels that had formed the back- 
bone of Rojdestvensky's forces. In the gathering darkness 
Nebogatoff collected the survivors and staggered northward. 

Of slight value in the day engagement, 21 Japanese destroy- 
ers, with about 40 torpedo boats which had sheltered under 
Tsushima Island, now darted after the fleeing foe. In the fog 
and heavy weather they were almost as great a menace to each 
other as to the enemy. Russian ships without searchlights 
escaped harm. Of three or perhaps four Russian vessels 
struck, all but the Navarin stayed afloat until the next day. 
Admiral Custance estimates 8 hits, or 9% of the torpedoes 
fired. There were at least 6 collisions among the flotillas, and 
4 boats destroyed. 

On the morning of the 28th the remains of the Russian fleet 
were scattered over the sea. Nebogatoff with 4 battleships and 
2 cruisers surrendered at 10.30. Of the 37 ships all told that 
entered Tsushima Straits, only the following escaped : the cruis- 
ers Oleg, Aurora, and Jemschug reached Manila on June 3 ; a 
tug and a supply ship entered Shanghai, and another transport 
with plenty of coal went clear to Madagascar; only the fast 
cruiser Almas and two destroyers made Vladivostok. 

Among the lessons to be drawn from Tsushima, one of the 



RIVALRY FOR WORLD POWER 343 

clearest is the weakening effect of divided purpose. With all 
honor to Admiral Rojdestvensky for his courage and persist- 
ence during his cruise, it is evident that at the end he allowed 
the supply problem to interfere with his preparations for battle, 
and that he fought "with one eye on Vladivostok." It is evi- 
dent also that only by a long period of training and operating 
as a unit can a collection of ships and men be welded into an 
effective fighting force. Torpedo results throughout the war, 
whether due to faulty materials or unskilled employment, were 
not such as to increase the reliance upon this weapon. The 
gun retained its supremacy; and the demonstrated advantage 
conferred by speed and heavy armament in long range fighting 
was reflected in the "all-big-gun" Dreadnought of 1906 and 
the battle cruisers of 1908. 

Immediately after the Russian navy had been swept out of 
existence, President Roosevelt offered to mediate, and received 
favorable replies from the warring nations. By the treaty 
signed at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on September 5, 1905, 
Russia withdrew from Manchuria in favor of China, recog- 
nized Japan's paramount position in Korea (annexed by Japan 
in 1910), and surrendered to Japan her privileges in Port 
Arthur and the Liao-tung Peninsula. In lieu of indemnity, 
Japan after a long deadlock was induced by pressure on the 
part of England and the United States to' accept that portion 
of the island of Saghalien south of the parallel of 50°. Thus 
the war thwarted Russia's policy of aggressive imperialism in 
the East, and established Japan firmly on the mainland at 
China's front door. At the same time, by the military debacle 
oi Russia, it dangerously disturbed the balance of power in 
Europe, upon which the safety of that continent had long 
been made precariously to depend. 

REFERENCES 

Spanish-American War 

Notes on the Spanish American War (a series of publications 
issued by the Office of Naval Intelligence, U. S. Navy Department, 
1900). 



SU A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

Sampson-Schley Official Communications to the U. S. Senate, 

Gov't Printing Office, 1899. 
The Downfall of Spain, H. W. Wilson, 1900. 
With Sampson Through the War, W. A. M. Goode, 1899. 
A History of the Spanish-American War, R. H. Tetherington, 

1900. 

Russo-Japanese War 

International Relations of the Chinese Empire, 3 vols., H. B. 

Morse, 1918. 
The Battle of Tsushima (1906), Rasplata (1910), Captain Vla- 
dimir Semenofr". 
Japanese Official History, translated in U. S. Naval Institute 

Proceedings, July-August, September-October, 1914. 
The Ship of the Line in Battle, Admiral Reginald Custance, 

1912. 
The Russian Navy in the Russo-Japanese War, Captain N. Klado, 

1905. 
Official British History of the Russo-Japanese War, 3 vols., 

1910. 
The American Merchant Marine, Debaters' Handbook Series, 

N. Y., 1916 (with bibliography). 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE WORLD WAR: THE FIRST YEAR (1914-1915) 

The Russo-Japanese war greatly weakened Russia's posi- 
tion in Europe, and left the Dual Alliance of France and Russia 
overweighted by the military strength of the Teutonic Empires, 
Germany and Austria, whether or not Italy should adhere to 
the Triple Alliance with these nations. To Great Britain, such 
a disturbance of the European balance was ever a matter of 
grave concern, and an abandonment of her policy of isolation 
was in this instance virtually forced upon her by Germany's 
rivalry in her own special sphere of commerce and sea power. 

The disturbing effect of Germany's naval growth during 
the two decades prior to 19 14 affords in fact an excellent illus- 
tration of the influence of naval strength in peace as well as 
in war. Under Bismarck Germany had pushed vigorously 
though tardily into the colonial field, securing vast areas of 
rather doubtful value in East and West Africa, and the 
Bismarck Archipelago, Marshall Islands, and part of New 
Guinea in the Pacific. With the accession of William II in 
1888 and the dropping of the pilot, Bismarck, two years later, 
she embarked definitely upon her quest for world power. The 
young Kaiser read eagerly Mahan's Influence of Sea Power 
Upon History (1890), distributed it among the ships of his 
still embryonic navy, and fed his ambition on the doctrines of 
this epoch-making work. * 

Naval development found further stimulus and justification 
in the rapid economic growth of Germany. In 19 12 her in- 
dustrial production attained a value of three billion dollars, as 
compared with slightly over four billion for England and 
seven billion for the United States. Since 1893 her merchant 
marine had tripled in size and taken second place to that of 
England with a total of over five million tons. During the same 

345 



346 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

period she surpassed France and the United States in volume 
of foreign commerce, and in this respect also reached a posi- 
tion second to Great Britain, with a more rapid rate of increase. 
An immigration of 220,000 a year in the early eighties was 
cut down to 22,000 in 1900. 1 To assure markets for her man- 
ufactures, and continued growth in population and industry, 
Germany felt that she must strive to extend her political power. 

Though Germany's commercial expansion met slight oppo- 
sition even in areas under British control, it undoubtedly justi- 
fied measures of political and naval protection ; and it was this 
motive that was advanced in the preface to the German Naval 
Bill of 1900, which declared that, "To protect her sea trade 
and colonies . . . Germany must have a fleet so strong 
that a war, even with the greatest naval power, would involve 
such risks as to jeopardize the position of that power." 2 Fur- 
thermore, Germany's quest for colonies and points of vantage 
such as Kiao-chau, her scheme for a Berlin-Bagdad railroad 
with domination of the territories on the route, had parallel 
in the activities of other nations. Unfortunately, however, 
Germany's ambitions grew even more rapidly than her com- 
merce, until her true aim appeared to be destruction of rivals 
and domination of the world. 

The seizure of Kiao-chau in 1897-98 coincided with the ap- 
pointment of Admiral von Tirpitz as Imperial Minister of 
Marine. Under his administration, the Naval Bill of 1900, 
passed in a heat of anglophobia aroused by the Boer War, 
doubled the program of 1898, and contained ingenious provi- 
sions by which the Reichstag was bound to steady increases 
covering a long period of years, and by which the Navy De- 
partment was empowered to replace worthless old craft, after 
20 or 25 years' service, with new ships of the largest size. As 
the armament race grew keener, this act was amended in the 
direction of further increases, but its program was never cut 
down. 

International crises and realignments marked the growing 
tension of these years. In 1905 England extended for ten 

1 Figures from Priest, Germany Since 1840, p. 150 ff. 
2 Hurd and Castle, German Sea Power, Appendix II. 



THE WORLD WAR 347 

years her understanding with Japan. By the Entente Cordiale 
with France in 1904 and a later settlement of outstanding dif^ 
Acuities with Russia, she also practically changed the Dual 
Alliance into a Triple Entente, though without positively bind- 
ing herself to assistance in war. To the agreement of 1904 
by which England and France assured each other a free hand 
in Egypt and Morocco, respectively, the Kaiser raised strenu- 
ous objections, and forced the resignation of the anglophile 
French Foreign Minister, Delcasse; but at the Algeciras Con- 
vention of 1906, assembled to settle the Morocco question, 
Germany and Austria stood virtually alone. Even the Ameri- 
can delegates, sent by President Roosevelt at the Kaiser's in-> 
vitation, voted generally with the Western Powers. When 
Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1909, the Kaiser 
shook the mailed fist to better effect than at Algeciras, with 
the result that Russia had to accept this extension of Austro- 
German influence in the Balkan sphere. Still again two years 
later, when the German cruiser Panther made moves to estab- 
lish a base at Agadir on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, Europe 
approached the verge of war; but Germany found the financial 
situation against her, backed down, and eventually took a 
strip of land on the Congo in liquidation of her Morocco 
claims. 

For all her resolute saber-rattling in these years, Germany 
found herself checkmated in almost every move. The Monroe 
Doctrine, for which the United States showed willingness to 
fight in the Venezuela affair of 1902, balked her schemes in 
the New World. In the Far East she faced Japan; in Africa, 
British sea power. A "Drang nach Osten," through the Bal- 
kans and Turkey toward Asia Minor, offered on the whole 
the best promise ; and it was in this quarter that Austria's vio- 
lent demands upon Serbia aroused Russia and precipitated the 
World War. 

Great Britain's foreign agreements, already noted, had as a 
primary aim the concentration of her fleet in home waters. 
Naval predominance in the Far East she turned over to Japan ; 
in the western Atlantic, to the United States (at least by 
acceptance of the Monroe Doctrine and surrender of treaty 



848 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

rights to share in the construction of the Panama Canal) ; and 
in the Mediterranean, to France, though England still kept a 
strong cruiser force in this field. The old policy of showing 
the flag all over the world was abandoned, 160 old ships were 
sent to the scrap heap as unable "either to fight or to run 
away," and 88% of the fleet was concentrated at home, so 
quietly that it "was found out only by accident by Admiral 
Mahan." x 

These and other changes were carried out under the ener- 
getic regime of Admiral Fisher, First Sea Lord from 1904 to 
1910. The British Dreadnought of 1906, completed in 10 
months, and the battle cruisers of 1908 — Indefatigable, In- 
vincible and Indomitable — came as an unpleasant surprise to 
Germany, necessitating construction of similar types and en- 
largement of the Kiel Canal. Reforms in naval gunnery urged 
by Admiral Sir Percy Scott were taken up, and plans were 
made for new bases in the Humber, in the Forth at Rosyth, 
and in the Orkneys, necessitated by the shift of front from 
the Channel to the North Sea. But against the technical skill, 
painstaking organization, and definitely aggressive purpose of 
Germany, even more radical measures were needed to put the 
tradition-ridden British navy in readiness for war. 

Naval preparedness was vital, for the conflict was funda- 
mentally, like the Napoleonic Wars, a struggle between land 
power predominant on the Continent and naval power supreme 
on the seas. As compared with France in the earlier struggle, 
Germany was more dependent on foreign commerce, and in a 
long war would feel more keenly the pressure of blockade. 
On the other hand, while the naval preponderance of England 
and her allies was probably greater than 100 years before, 
England had to throw larger armies into the field and more of 
her shipping into naval service, and found her commerce not 
augmented but cut down. 

Indeed, Germany was not without advantage in the naval 

war. As she fully expected, her direct sea trade was soon 

shut off, and her shipping was driven to cover or destroyed. 

But Germany was perhaps 80% self-supporting, was well sup- 

1 Admiral Fisher, Memories, p. 185. 



THE WORLD WAR 349 

plied with minerals and munitions, and could count on trade 
through neutral states on her frontiers. Her shallow, well-pro- 
tected North Sea coast-line gave her immunity from naval 
attack and opportunity to choose the moment in which to throw 
her utmost strength into a sortie. So long as her fleet re- 
mained intact, it controlled the Baltic by virtue of an interior 
line through the Kiel Canal, thus providing a strangle hold 
on Russia and free access to northern neutrals. Only by 
dangerous division of forces, or by leaving the road to Eng- 
land and the Atlantic open, could the British fleet enter the 
Baltic Sea. England it is true had a superior navy (perhaps 
less superior than was commonly thought), and a position of 
singular advantage between Germany and the overseas world. 
But for her the maintenance of naval superiority was abso- 
lutely essential. An effective interference with her sea com- 
munications would quickly put her out of the war. 

The importance (for Germany as well as for England) 
of preserving their main fighting fleets, may explain the wari- 
ness with which they were employed. Instead of risking them 
desperately, both sides turned to commerce warfare — the 
Western Powers resorting to blockade and the Germans to 
submarines. Each of these forms of warfare played a highly 
important part in the war, and the submarine campaign in 
particular, calling for new methods and new instruments, 
seems almost to have monopolized the naval genius and en- 
ergies of the two groups of belligerents. It may be noted, 
however, that but for the cover afforded by High Seas Fleet, 
the submarine campaign could hardly have been undertaken; 
and but for the Grand Fleet, it would have been unnecessary. 

The naval strength of the various belligerents in July, 1914, 
appears in the table on the following page. 1 

Owing to new construction, these figures underwent rapid 
change. Thus England added 4 dreadnoughts (2 built for 
Turkey) in August, 1914; the battle cruiser Tiger in Novem- 
ber; the dreadnought Canada and 5 Queen Elisabeths in 191 5 ; 
and 5 Royal Sovereigns in 1915-1916. In comparisons, full 
account is not always taken of the naval support of England's 
1 From table prepared by U. S. Office of Naval Intelligence, July I, 1916. 



350 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 





Great 
Britain 


Ger- 
many 


U.S. 
(1916) 


France 


Japan 


Russia 


Italy 


Austria 


Dreadnoughts. . . 


20 


13 


12 


4 


2 




3 


3 


Pre-dreadn'ts . . . 


40 


20 


21 


18 


13 


7 


8 


6 


Battle Cruisers. . 


9 


4 






2 








Armored Cr's . . . 


34 


9 


10 


20 


13 


6 


9 


2 


Cruisers 


74 


4i 


14 


9 


13 


9 


6 


5 


Destroyers 


167 


130 


54 


84 


So 


9i 


36 


18 


Submarines 


78 


30 


44 


64 


13 


3° 


19 


6 



allies; it is true, however, that the necessity of protecting 
coasts, troop convoys, and commerce prevented her from 
throwing her full strength into the North Sea. Her capital 
ships were in two main divisions — the 1st or Grand Fleet in 
the Orkneys, and the 26. fleet, consisting at first of 16 pre- 
dreadnoughts, in the Channel. Admiral Jellicoe 1 gives the 
strength of the Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet, 
on August 4, 19 14, as follows : 





Dread- 
noughts 


Pre- 
D read- 
noughts 


Battle 
cruisers 


Light 
cruisers 


De- 
stroyers 


Air- 
ships 


Cruisers 


British . . 
German . 


20 
13 


8 
16 


4 
3 


12 
IS 


42 
88 


1 


9 

2 



Of submarines, according to 1 the same authority, England 
had 17 of the D and E classes fit for distant operations, and 
37 fit only for coast defense, while Germany had 28 U boats, 
all but two or three of which were able to cruise overseas. The 
British admiral's account of the inferiority of the British navy 
in submarines, aircraft, mines, destroyers, director firing (in- 
stalled in only 8 ships in 1914), armor-piercing shells, and 

1 The Grand Fleet, p. 31. 



THE WOULD WAR 351 

protection of bases, seems to justify the caution of British 
operations, but is a severe indictment of the manner in which 
money appropriated for the navy was used. 

To open a war with England by surprise naval attack was 
no doubt an element in German plans; but in 1914 this was 
negatived by the forewarning of events on the Continent, by 
Germany's persistent delusion that England would stay neu- 
tral, and by the timely mobilization of the British fleet. This 
had been announced the winter before as a practical exercise, 
was carried out according to schedule from July 16 to July 23 
(the date of Austria's ultimatum to Serbia), and was then ex- 
tended until July 29, at which date the Grand Fleet sailed for 
Scapa Flow. 

At midnight of August 4 the British ultimatum to Germany 
expired and hostilities began. During the same night the 
Grand Fleet swept the northern exit of the North Sea to pre- 
vent the escape of enemy raiders, only one of which, the Kaiser 
Wilhelm der Grosse, actually reached the Atlantic in this first 
stage of the war. On a similar sweep further south, the Har- 
wich light cruiser and destroyer force under Commodore 
Tyrwhitt sank by gunfire the mine layer Konigin Luise, which 
a trawler had reported "throwing things overboard" ; but the 
next morning, August 6, the cruiser Amphion, returning near 
the same position, was destroyed by two mines laid by her 
victim of the day before. On the same date five cables were 
cut leading from Germany overseas. From August 10 to 23 
all British forces were busy covering the transit of the first 
troops sent to the Continent. Such, in brief summary, and 
omitting more distant activities for the present, were the open- 
ing naval events of the war. 

The Heligoland Bight Action 

On the morning of August 28 occurred a lively action in 
Heligoland Bight, which cost Germany 3 light cruisers and a 
destroyer, and seemed to promise further aggressive action off 
the German shores. The British plan called for a destroyer 
and light cruiser sweep southward to a point about 12 miles 



352 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

west of Heligoland, and thence westward, with submarines 
disposed off Heligoland as decoys, the object being to cut off 
German destroyers and patrols. Commodore Tyrwhitt's force 
which was to execute the raid consisted of the ist and 3rd 
flotillas of 16 destroyers each, led by the new light cruiser 
Arethusa, flagship (28.5 knots, two 6", six 4" guns), and the 
Fearless (25.4 knots, ten 4" guns). These were to be sup- 
ported about 50 miles to westward by two battle cruisers from 
the Humber. This supporting force was at the last moment 



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British daetrcyejvs till ais 



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_, •••---"""" PIBST PHASE 



HELIGOLAND BIGHT ACTION, AUG. 28, I9I4 

joined by three battle cruisers under Admiral Beatty and 6 
cruisers under Commodore Goodenough from the Grand Fleet ; 
but news of the accession never reached Commodore Keyes of 
the British submarines, who was hence puzzled later by the 
appearance of Goodenough's cruisers on the scene. 

The Germans, it appears, had got wind of the enemy plan, 
and arranged a somewhat similar counter-stroke. As Com- 
modore Tyrwhitt's flotillas swept southward, they engaged 
and chased 10 German destroyers straight down upon Heligo- 
land. Here the Arethusa and the Fearless were sharply en- 
gaged with two German light cruisers, the Stettin and the 
Frauenlob (ten 4.1" guns each), until actually in sight of the) 



THE WORLD WAR 353 

island. Both sides suffered, the Frauenlob withdrawing to 
Wilhelmshaven with 50 casualties, and the Arethusa having 
her speed cut down and nearly every gun put temporarily out 
of commission. 

Whipping around to westward, the flotillas caught the Ger- 
man destroyer V 187, which at 9.10, after an obstinate resist- 
ance, was reduced to a complete wreck enveloped in smoke and 
steam. As British destroyers picked up survivors, they were 
driven off by the Stettin; but two boats with British crews and 
German prisoners were rescued later by the British subma- 
rine E 4, which had been lurking nearby. 

Extraordinary confusion now developed from the fact that 
Commodore Keyes in his submarine flotilla leader Lurcher 
sighted through the mist two of Goonenough's cruisers (which 
had chased a destroyer eastward), and reported them as ene- 
mies. The call was picked up by Goodenough himself, who 
brought his remaining four ships to Keyes' assistance ; but when 
these appeared, Keyes thought that he had to deal with four 
enemies more! Tyrwhitt was also drawn backward by the 
alarm. Luckily the situation was cleared up without seri- 
ous consequences. 

German cruisers, darting out of the Ems and the Jade, were 
now entering the fray. At 10.55 tne Fearless and the Are- 
thusa with their flotillas were attacked by the Stralsund, which 
under a heavy fire made off toward Heligoland. Then at 
1 1. 1 5 the Stettin engaged once more, and five minutes later the 
Mainz. Just as this last ship was being finished up by de- 
stroyer attack, and the Stettin and two fresh cruisers, Koln 
and Ariadne, were rushing to her assistance, Beatty's five 
battle cruisers appeared to westward and rose swiftly out of 
the haze. 

Admiral Beatty's opportune dash into action at this time, 
from his position 40 miles away, was in response to an urgent 
call from Tyrwhitt at 1 1.15, coupled with the fact that, as 
the Admiral states in his report, "The flotillas had advanced 
only 2 miles since 8 a.m., and were only about 25 miles from 
two enemy bases." "Our high speed," the report continues, 
"made submarine attack difficult, and the smoothness of the 



354 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



sea made their detection fairly easy. I considered that we 
were powerful enough to deal with any sortie except by a 
battle squadron, which was unlikely to come out in time, pro- 
vided our stroke was sufficiently rapid." 

The Stettin broke backward just in the nick of time. The 
Kbln, flagship of the German commodore, was soon stagger- 
ing off in a blaze, and was later sunk with her total comple- 
ment of 380 officers and men. The Ariadne, steaming at 




STE*-ti»si osco.peB..; ase 
5B.4* "TS'L'b *"* :••'■"' > 

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HELIGOLAND BIGHT ACTION, FINAL PHASE, 12:30-1:40 
From 20 to 40 miles slightly S. of W. from Heligoland. 



high speed across the bows of the British flagship Lion, was 
put out of action by two well-placed salvos. At i.io the Lion 
gave the general signal "Retire." 

Though the German cruisers had fought hard and with 
remarkable accuracy of fire, their movements had been tardy 
and not well concerted. The British losses amounted alto- 
gether to only 33 killed and 40 wounded; while the enemy 
lost in killed, wounded, and prisoners over 1000 men. Very 
satisfactory, from the British standpoint, was the effect of 
the victory upon their own and upon enemy morale. 

Encouragement of this kind was desirable, for German sub- 



THE WORLD WAR 355 

marines and mines were already beginning to take their toll. 
Off the Forth on September 5, a single torpedo sank the light 
cruiser Pathfinder with nearly all hands. This loss was 
avenged when a week later the E 9, under Lieut. Commander 
Max Horton, struck down the German cruiser Hela within 
6 miles of Heligoland. But on September 22, at 6.30 a.m., 
a single old-type German craft, the U 9, dealt a staggering 
blow. With a total of 6 torpedoes Commander Weddingen 
sank first the Aboukir, and then in quick succession the Hogue 
and the Cressy, both dead in the water at the work of rescue. 
The loss of these rather antiquated vessels was less serious 
than that of over 1400 trained officers and men. A shock to 
British traditions came with the new order that ships must 
abandon injured consorts and make all speed away. 

In the bases at Rosyth and Scapa Flow, which at the out- 
break of war were totally unprotected against submarines and 
thought to be beyond their reach, the Grand Fleet felt less 
secure than when cruising on the open sea. Safer refuges 
were sought temporarily on the west coast of Scotland and at 
Lough Swilly in the north of Ireland, but even off this latter 
base on October 27, the big dreadnought Audacious was sunk 
by mines laid by the German auxiliary cruiser Berlin. In 
view of the impending Turkish crisis, the loss was not ad- 
mitted by the Admiralty, though since pictures of the sinking 
ship had actually been taken by passengers on the White Star 
liner Olympic, it could not long remain concealed. Mines and 
submarines had seemingly put the British navy on the de- 
fensive, even if consolation could be drawn from the fact 
that troops and supplies were crossing safely to France, the 
enemy had been held up at the Marne, the German surface 
fleet was passive, and the blockade was closing down. 

Escape of the "Goben" and the "Breslau" 

In distant waters Germany at the outbreak of the war had 
only ten cruisers — Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Emden, Niirn^ 
berg, and Leipzig in the Pacific, Konigsberg on the east coast 
of Africa, Karlsruhe and Dresden in the West Indies, and 



356 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

Gob en and Breslau in the Mediterranean. Within six months' 
time, these, together with a few auxiliary cruisers fitted out 
abroad, were either destroyed or forced to intern in neutral 
ports. Modern wireless communication, difficulties of coal- 
ing and supply, and the overwhelming naval strength of the 
Allies made the task of surface raiders for more difficult than 
in previous wars. They were nevertheless skillfully handled, 
and, operating in the wide ocean areas, created a troublesome 
problem for the Western Powers. 

The battle cruiser Gob en and the light cruiser Breslau alone, 
operating under Admiral Souchon in Mediterranean waters, 
accomplished ultimate results which would have easily justi- 
fied the sacrifice of ten times the number of ships lost by 
Germany in distant seas. To hunt down these two vessels, 
and at the same time contain the Austrian Navy, the Entente 
had in the Mediterranean not only the bulk of the French 
fleet but also 3 battle cruisers, 4 armored cruisers, and 4 
light cruisers of Great Britain. Early on August 4, as he 
was about to bombard the French bases of Bona and Philippe- 
ville in Algiers, Admiral Souchon received wireless orders 
to make for the Dardanelles. Germany and England were then 
on the very verge of war. Knowing the British ships to be 
concentrated near Malta, and actually passing the Indomitable 
and the Invincible in sullen silence as he turned eastward, 
the German commander decided to put in at Messina, Sicily. 

At the end of the 24 hours granted in this port, the pros- 
pects for the German ships appeared so desperate that the 
officers, it is said, made their final testaments before again 
putting to sea. Slipping eastward through the Straits of 
Messina at twilight of the 6th, they were sighted by the 
British scout Gloucester, which stuck close at their heels all 
that night and until 4.40 p.m. the next day. Then, under or- 
ders to turn back, and after boldly engaging the Breslau to 
check the flight, Captain Kelly of the Gloucester gave up the 
pursuit as the enemy rounded the Morea and entered the Greek 
Archipelago. 

The escape thus apparently so easy was the outcome of lack 
of coordination between French and British, slow and poor in- 



THE WORLD WAR 357 

formation from the British Admiralty, and questionable dispo- 
sition of the British forces on the basis of information actually 
at hand. Prior to hostilities, it was perhaps unavoidable that 
the British commander, Admiral Milne, should be ignorant of 
French plans ; but even on August 5 and 6 he still kept all 
his battle cruisers west and north of Sicily to protect the 
French troop transports, though by this time he might have 
felt assured that the French fleet was at sea. At the time 
of the escape Admiral Troubridge with 4 armored cruisers 
and a destroyer force barred the Adriatic; though he caught 
the Gloucester's calls, he was justified in not moving far from 
his station without orders, in view of his inferior strength 
and speed. Not until August 10 did British forces enter the 
/Egean ; and at 5 p.m. that day the two German ships steamed 
uninvited up the Dardanelles. Since the Turkish situation 
was still somewhat dubious, Admiral Souchon had been or- 
dered to delay his entrance; but on the 10th, hearing British 
wireless signals steadily approaching his position in the Greek 
islands, he took the decision into his own hands. Germany 
had "captured Turkey," as an Allied diplomat remarked upon 
seeing the ships in the Golden Horn. 

In this affair the British, it is true, had many preoccupa- 
tions — the hostile Austrian fleet, the doubtful neutrality of 
Italy, the French troop movement, the safety of Egypt and 
Suez. Yet the Admiralty were well aware that the German 
Ambassador von Wangenheim was dominant in Turkish coun- 
cils and that the Turkish army was mobilized under German 
officers. It seems strange, therefore, that an escape into 
Constantinople was, in the words of the British Official His- 
tory, "the only one that had not entered into our calculations." 
The whole affair illustrates the immense value political infor- 
mation may have in guiding naval strategy. The German 
ships, though ostensibly "sold" to the Turks, retained their 
German personnel. Admiral Souchon assumed command of 
the Turkish Navy, and by an attack on Russian ships in the 
Black Sea later succeeded in precipitating Turkey's entrance 
into the war, with its long train of evil consequences for the 
Western Powers. 



358 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

Coronet and the Falkland Islands 

In the Pacific the German cruisers were at first widely 
scattered, the Emden at Kiao-chau, the Leipzig on the west 
coast of Mexico, the Nurnberg at San Francisco, and the 
armored cruisers Gneisenau and Scharnhorst under Admiral 
von Spee in the Caroline Islands. The two ships at the 
latter point, after being joined by the Nurnberg, set out on a 
leisurely cruise for South America, where, in view of Japan's 
entry into the war, the German Admiral may have felt that 
he would secure a clearer field of operations and, with the aid 
of German- Americans, better facilities for supplies. After 
wrecking on their way the British wireless and cable station 
at Fanning Island, and looking into Samoa for stray British 
cruisers, the trio of ships were joined at Easter Island on 
October 14 by the Leipzig and also by the Dresden, which 
had fled thither from the West Indies. 

The concentration thus resulting seems of doubtful wis- 
dom, for, scattered over the trade routes, the cruisers would 
have brought about greater enemy dispersion and greater in- 
jury to commerce ; and, as the later course of the war was to 
show, the loss of merchant tonnage was even more serious for 
the Entente than loss of fighting ships. It seems evident, how- 
ever, that Admiral von Spee was not attracted by the tame 
task of commerce destroying, but wished to try his gunnery, 
highly developed in the calm waters of the Far East, against 
enemy men-of-war. 

In its present strength and position, the German "fleet in 
being" constituted a serious menace, for to assemble an ade- 
quate force against it on either side of Cape Horn would 
mean to leave the other side dangerously exposed. It was with 
a keen realization of this dilemma that Admiral Cradock in 
the British armored cruiser Good Hope left the Falklands on 
October 22 to join the Monmouth, Glasgow, and auxiliary 
cruiser Otranto in a sweep along the west coast. The old bat- 
tleship Canopus, with 12-inch guns, but only 12 knots cruis- 
ing speed, was properly judged too slow to keep with the 
squadron. It is difficult to say whether the failure to send 



THE WORLD WAR 



359 



Cradock reinforcements at this time from either the Atlantic 
or the Pacific was justified by the preoccupations in those fields. 
Needless to say, there was no hesitation, after Coronel, in 
hurrying ships to the scene. On November i, when the Ad- 
miralty Board was reorganized with Admiral Fisher in his 
old place as First Sea Lord, orders at once went out sending 
the Defense to Cradock and enjoining him not to fight with- 
out the Canopus. But these orders he never received. 

The composition of the two squadrons now approaching 
each other off the Chilean coast was as follows : 



Name 


Type 


Displace- 
ment 


Belt 

armor 


Guns 


Speed 


Scharnhorst . . . 
Gneisenau. . . . 

Leipzig 

Niirnberg 

Dresden 


Armored cruiser 
Armored cruiser 
Protected cruiser 
Light cruiser 
Light cruiser 


1 1 ,600 

11,600 

3.250 

3.4SO 

3,600 


6-inch 

6-inch 

none 

none 

none 


8-8.2", 6-6" 
8-8.2", 6.6" 
10-4" 
10-4" 
10-4" 


23-5 
23-5 
23 
24 

24 


Good Hope . . . 
Monmouth . . . 
Glasgow 


Armored cruiser 
Armored cruiser 
Light cruiser 


14,000 
9,800 
4,800 


6-inch 
4-inch 
none 


2-9.2", 16-6 ", 14-3" 
14-6", 8-3" 
2-6", 10-4" 


24 
24 
26.5 


Canopus 
(not engaged) 


Coast defense 


12,950 


6-inch 


4-35 cal. 12", 12-6" 


16.5 



Without the Canopus, the British had perhaps a slight ad- 
vantage in squadron speed, but only the two 9.2-inch guns of 
the Good Hope could match the sixteen 8.2-inch guns of the 
Germans. Each side had information of the other's strength ; 
but on the afternoon of November 1, the date of the Battle 
of Coronel, each supposed that only one enemy cruiser was 
in the immediate vicinity. Hence there was mutual surprise 
when the two squadrons, spread widely on opposite courses, 
came in contact at 4.40 p. m. 

While concentrating and forming his squadron, Admiral 
Cradock must have pondered whether he should fight or re- 
treat. The Canopus he knew was laboring northward 250 
miles away. It was highly doubtful whether he could bring 
the enemy into action later with his slow battleship in line. 
His orders were to "search and protect trade." "Safety," we 



360 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

are told, "was a word he hardly knew." But his best justifica- 
tion lay in the enemy's menace to commerce and in the com- 
ment of Nelson upon a similar situation, "By the time the 
enemy has beat our fleet soundly, they will do us no more harm 
that year." It was perhaps with this thought that Admiral 
Cradock signaled to the Canopus, "I am going to fight the 
enemy now." 

At about 6 p.m. the two columns were 18,000 yards dis- 
tant on southerly converging courses. The British, to west- 
ward and slightly ahead, tried to force the action before sun- 
set, when they would be silhouetted against the afterglow. 
Their speed at this time, however, seems to have been held up 
by the auxiliary cruiser Otranto, which later retreated south- 
westward, and their efforts to close were thwarted by the 
enemy's turning slightly away. Admiral von Spee in fact 
secured every advantage of position, between the British and 
the neutral coast, on the side away from the sun, and on such 
a course that the heavy seas from east of south struck the 
British ships on their engaged bows, showering the batteries 
with spray and rendering useless the lower deck guns. 

At 7 o'clock the German ships opened fire at 11,260 yards. 
The third salvo from the Schamhorst disabled the Good Hope's 
forward 8.2-inch gun. The Monmouth's forecastle was soon 
on fire. It seems probable indeed that most of the injury to 
the British was inflicted by accurate shooting in this first 
stage of the action. On account of the gathering darkness, 
Admiral von Spee allowed the range to be closed to about 5500 
yards, guiding his aim at first by the blaze on the Monmouth, 
and then for a time ceasing fire. Shortly before 8 o'clock 
a huge column of flame shooting up between the stacks of 
the Good Hope marked her end. The Monmouth sheered 
away to westward and then northward with a heavy list that 
prevented the use of her port guns. An hour later, at 9.25, 
with her flag still flying defiantly, she was sunk by the Num- 
ber g at point blank range. The Glasgow, which had fought 
throughout the action, but had suffered little from the fire of 
the German light cruisers, escaped in the darkness. 

"It is difficult," writes an American officer, "to find fault 



THE WORLD WAR 



361 



.jOTRAiSTO 

MONMOUTH , ' «^4?«*, A A 7 

GOOOHOPE^--*","..- " _-- — 



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,' opens fire. 70S 



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escaping s , U|X. ^.eS 57 ^ 



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From Official British Naval History, Vol. I. 
BATTLE OF CORONEL, NOV. I, IQI4 



362 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



with the tactics of Admiral von Spee; he appears to have 
maneuvered so as to secure the advantage of light, wind, and 
sea, and to have suited himself as regards the range." 1 The 
Scharnhorst was hit twice, the Gneisenau four times, and the 
German casualties were only two men wounded. 




ADMIRAL VON SPEE S MOVEMENTS 



This stinging blow and the resultant danger aroused the 
new Board of Admiralty to energetic moves. Entering the 
Atlantic, the German squadron might scatter upon the trade 
routes or support the rebellion in South Africa. Again, it 
might double westward or northward in the Pacific, or pass 
in~groups of three, as permitted by American rules, through 
the Panama Canal into the West Indies. Concerted measures 

1 Commander C. C. Gill, Naval Power in the War, p. 51. 



THE WORLD WAR 363 

were taken against these possibilities. Despite the weakening 
of the Grand Fleet, the battle cruisers Invincible and Inflexible 
under Admiral Sturdee, former Chief of Admiralty Staff, 
sailed on November n for the Falkland Islands. Their des- 
tination was kept a close secret, for had the slightest inkling 
of their mission reached German ears it would at once have 
been communicated to von Spee. 

After the battle, the German admiral moved slowly south- 
ward, coaling from chartered vessels and prizes; and it was 
not until December i that he rounded the Horn. Even now, 
had he moved directly upon the Falklands, he would have en- 
countered only the Canopies, but he again delayed several days 
to take coal from a prize. On December 7 the British battle 
cruisers and other ships picked up in passage arrived at the 
island base and at once began to coal. 

Their coming was not a moment too soon. At 7.30 the 
next morning, while coaling was still in progress and fires 
were drawn in the Bristol, the signal station on the neck of 
land south of the harbor reported two strange vessels, which 
proved to be the Gneisenau and the Nurnberg, approaching 
from the southward. As they eased down to demolish the 
wireless station, the Canopus opened on them at about 11,000 
yards by indirect fire. The two ships swerved off, and at 
9.40, perceiving the dense clouds of smoke over the harbor 
and what appeared to be tripod masts, they fell back on their 
main force. 

Hull down, and with about 15 miles' start, the Germans, 
had they scattered at this time might, most of them at least, 
have escaped, as they certainly would have if their approach 
had been made more cautiously and at a later period in the 
day. The British ships were now out, with the fast Glasgow 
well in the lead. In the chase that followed, Admiral von 
Spee checked speed somewhat to keep his squadron together. 
Though Admiral Sturdee for a time did the same, he was 
able at 12.50 to open on the rear ship Leipzig at 16,000 yards. 
At 1.20 the German light cruisers scattered to southwestward, 
followed by the Cornwall, Kent, and Glasgow. The 26-knot 
Bristol, had she been able to work up steam in time, would 



364 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

have been invaluable in this pursuit; she was sent instead to 
destroy three enemy colliers or transports reported off the 
islands. 

Between the larger ships the action continued at long range, 
for the superior speed of the battle cruisers enabled Admiral 
Sturdee to choose his distance, and his proper concern was 
to demolish the enemy with his own ships unscathed. At 
2.05 he turned 8 points to starboard to clear the smoke blown 
down from the northwest and reduce the range, which had 
increased to 16,000 yards. Admiral von Spee also turned 
southward, and the stern chase was renewed without firing 
until 2.45. At this point both sides turned to port, the Ger- 
mans now slightly in the rear and working in to 12,500 yards 
to use their 5.9-inch guns. 

At 3.15 the British came completely about to avoid the 
smoke, and the Germans also turned, a little later, as if to 
cross their bows. (See diagram.) The Gneisenau and 
Scharnhorst, though fighting gamely, were now beaten ships, 
the latter with upper works a "shambles of torn and twisted 
iron," and holes in her sides through which could be seen 
the red glow of flames. She turned on her beam-ends at 4.17 
and sank with every man on board. At 6 o'clock, after a 
fight of extraordinary persistence, the Gneisenau opened her 
sea-cocks and went down. All her 8-inch ammunition had 
been expended, and 600 of her 850 men were disabled or 
killed. Some 200 were saved. 

Against ships with 12-inch guns and four times their weight 
of broadside the Gneisenau and Scharnhorst made a creditable 
record of over 20 hits. The British, however, suffered no 
casualties or material injury. While Admiral Sturdee's tactics 
are thus justified, the prolongation of the battle left him no 
time to join in the light cruiser chase, and even opened the 
possibility, in the rain squalls of the late afternoon, that one 
of the armored cruisers might get away. In spite of a calm 
sea and excellent visibility during most of the action, the gun- 
nery of the battle cruisers appears to have been less accurate 
at long range than in the later engagement off the Dogger Bank. 

Following similar tactics, the Glasgow and Cornwall over- 



THE WORLD WAR 365 



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DRESDEN 



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From Official British Naval History, Vol. I. 
BATTLE OF THE FALKLAND ISLANDS, DEC. 8, I914 

British Squadron 
Name Type 

Invincible Battle Cruiser 

Inflexible Battle Cruiser 

Carnarvon Armored Cruiser 

Cornwall Armored Cruiser 

Kent Armored Cruiser 

Bristol Scout Cruiser 

Glasgow Scout Cruiser 

Canopus Coast Defense 

German Squadron 
Scharnhorst Armored Cruiser 

Gneisenau Armored Cruiser 

Leipzig Protected Cruiser 

Niirnberg Scout Cruiser 

Dresden Scout Cruiser 



Guns 


Speed 


8 — 12", 16 — 4" 


26.5 


8 — 12", 16 — 4" 


26. s 


4—7-5". 6—6" 


23.0 


14 — 6" 


23-5 


14 — 6" 


23.0 


2 — 6", 10 — 4" 


26.5 


2 — 6", 10 — 4" 


26.5 


4 — 12", 12 — 6" 


16.5 


8—8.2", 6—6" 


23.5 


8—8.2", 6—6" 


23.5 


10 — 4" 


23.0 


10 — 4" 


24-0 


10 — 4" 


£4.0 



366 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

took and finally silenced the Leipzig at 7 p.m., four hours 
after the Glasgow had first opened fire. Defiant to the last, 
like the Monmouth at Coronel, and with her ammunition gone, 
she sank at 9.25, carrying down all but 18 of her officers 
and crew. The Kent, stoking all her woodwork to increase 
steam, attained at 5 o'clock a position 12,000 yards from the 
Nilrnberg, when the latter opened fire. At this late hour 
a long range action was out of the question. As the Nilrnberg 
slowed down with two of her boilers burst, the Kent closed 
to 3000 yards and at 7.30 finished off her smaller opponent. 
The Dresden, making well above her schedule speed of 24 
knots, had disappeared to southwestward early in the after- 
noon. Her escape entailed a long search, until, on March 14, 
191 5, she was destroyed by the Kent and Glasgow off Juan 
Fernandez, where she had taken refuge for repairs. 

Cruise of the "Emden" 

Among the German cruisers other than those of Admiral 
von Spec's squadron, the exploits of the Emden are best 
known, and reminiscent of the Alabama's famous cruise in 
the American Civil War. It may be noted, however, as in- 
dicative of changed conditions, that the Emden' s depredations 
covered only two months instead of two years. A 3600 ton 
ship with a speed of 25 knots, the Emden left Kiao-chau on 
August 6, met von Spec's cruisers in the Ladrones on the 
1 2th, and on September 10 appeared most unexpectedly on 
the west side of the Bay of Bengal. Here she sank five Brit- 
ish merchantmen, all following the customary route with lights 
aglow. On the 18th she was off the Rangoon River, and 6 
days later across the bay at Madras, where she set ablaze two 
tanks of the Burma Oil Company with half a million gallons 
of kerosene. From September 26 to 29 she was at the junc- 
tion of trade routes west of Ceylon, and again, after an over- 
haul in the Chagos Archipelago to southward, spent October 
16-19 in the same profitable field. Like most raiders, she 
planned to operate in one locality not more than three or four 
days, and then, avoiding all vessels on her course, strike 



THE WORLD WAR 367 

suddenly elsewhere. During this period, British, Japanese, 
French, and Russian crusiers — the Germans assert there were 
19 at one time — followed her trail. 

The most daring adventure of Captain von Muller, the 
Emden' s skipper, was now carried out in the harbor of Pe- 
nang, on the west side of the Malay Peninsula. With an ad- 
ditional false funnel to imitate British county-class cruisers, 
the Emden at daybreak of October 28 passed the picket-boat 
off the harbor unchallenged, destroyed the Russian cruiser 
Jemtchug by gunfire and two torpedoes, and, after sinking 
the French destroyer Mousquet outside, got safely away. The 
Russian commander was afterward condemned for letting 
his ship lie at anchor with open lights, with only an anchor 
watch, and with strangers at liberty to visit her. 

Steaming southward, the raider made her next and last 
appearance on the morning of November 9 off the British 
cable and wireless station on the Cocos Islands. As she ap- 
proached, word was promptly cabled to London, Adelaide, 
and Singapore, and — more profitably — was wirelessed to an 
Australian troop convoy then only 45 miles away. The Em- 
den caught the message, but nevertheless sent a party ashore, 
and was standing outside when the armored cruiser Sydney 
came charging up. Against the Emden's ten 4.1-inch guns, 
the Sydney had eight 6-inch guns, and she was at least 4 knots 
faster. Outranged and outdone in speed, the German ship 
was soon driven ashore in a sinking condition, with a funnel 
down and steering gear disabled. During her two months' 
activity thus ended, the Emden had made 21 captures, destroy- 
ing ships and cargoes to the value of over $10,000,000. 

The other German cruisers were also short-lived. The 
Karlsruhe, after arming the liner Kronprinz Wilhelm off 
the Bahamas (August 6) and narrowly escaping the Suffolk 
and the Bristol by superior speed, operated with great success 
on the South American trade routes. Her disappearance — 
long a mystery to the Allies — was due to an internal explosion, 
just as she was about to crown her exploits by a raid on the 
island of Barbados. The Konigsberg, on the east coast of 
Africa, surprised and sank the British light cruiser Pegasus 



368 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 




THE WORLD WAR 369 

while the latter lay at Mombasa, Zanzibar, making repairs. 
She was later bottled up in the Rufigi River (October 30) 
and finally destroyed there (July 11, 1915) by indirect fire 
from monitors, "spotted" by airplanes. 

Of the auxiliary cruisers, the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse 
was sunk by the Highflyer (August 26), and the Cap Tra- 
falgar went down after a hard fight with the Carmania ( Sep- 
tember 14). The Prinz Eitel Friedrich, which had entered 
the Atlantic with von Spee, interned at Newport News, Vir- 
ginia, in March, 191 5, and was followed thither a month later 
by the Kronprinz Wilhelm. 

The results of this surface warfare upon commerce amounted 
to 69 merchant vessels, totaling 280,000 tons. With more 
strict concentration upon commerce destruction, and further 
preparations for using German liners as auxiliaries, the cam- 
paign might have been prolonged and made somewhat more 
effective. But for the same purpose the superiority of the 
submarine was soon demonstrated. To take the later surface 
raiders: the Wolf sank or captured 20 ships in 15 months at 
sea; the Seeadler, 23 in 7 months; the Mbwe 15 in 2 months. 
But many a submarine in one month made a better record 
than these. The opening of Germany's submarine campaign, 
to be treated later, was formally announced by her blockade 
proclamation of February 4, 191 5. 

The Dogger Bank Action 

The strategic value of the battle cruiser, as a means of throw- 
ing strength quickly into distant fields, was brought out in the 
campaign against von Spee. As an outcome of German raids 
on the east coast of England, its tactical qualities, against 
units of equal strength, were soon put to a sharper trial. Aside 
from mere Schrecklichkeit — a desire to carry the terrors of 
war to English soil — these raids had the legitimate military 
objects of helping distant cruisers by holding British ships 
in home waters, of delaying troop movements to France, and 
of creating a popular clamor that might force a dislocation 
or division of the Grand Fleet. The first incursion, on No- 



370 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



vember 3, inflicted trifling damage; the second, on Decem- 
ber 16, was marked by the bombardment of Scarborough, 
Hartlepool, and Whitby, in which 99 civilians were killed and 
500 wounded. The third, on January 24 following, brought 
on the Dogger Bank action, the first encounter between battle 
cruisers, and one of the two capital ship actions of the war. 
At dawn on this date, the Derfflinger, Seydlitz (flagship of 
Admiral von Hipper), Moltke, and armored cruiser Blucher, 
with 4 light cruisers and two destroyer flotillas, were moving 
westward about midway in the North Sea on a line between 
Heligoland and the scene of their former raids. Five battle 
cruisers under Admiral Beatty were at the same time ap- 
proaching a rendezvous with the Harwich Force for one of 
their periodical sweeps in the southern area. The Harwich 
Force first came in contact with the enemy about 7 a.m. For- 
tunately for the Germans, they had already been warned of 
Beatty's approach by one of their light cruisers, and had 
just turned back at high speed when the British battle cruisers 
made them out to southeastward 14 miles away. The forces 
opposed were as follows : 



British 


Displace- 
ment 


Armor 


Guns 


Best 
recent 
[speed 1 


German 


Displace- 
ment 


Armor 


Guns 


Best 
recent 
speed 




26,350 
28,500 
28,350 
18,800 
17,250 


9" 
9* 
9* 
8* 
7* 


813.5" 
8 13. 5" 
8 13. 5* 

8 12* 

8 12* 


31-7 

32 

31.7 

29 

28.7 


Derfflinger. . . 
Moltke 


26,180 
24,610 
22,640 
15,550 


13" 
K» 
II* 

6' 


812* 
10 11* 
10 11* 
12 8.2* 


30 
29 

28.4 
25-3 


Tiger 

Princess Roya! 
New Zealand . . 
Indomitable . . . 



1 Jane's Fighting Ships, 1814. 



Settling at once to a stern chase, the British ships increased 
speed to 28.5 knots; while the Germans, handicapped by the 
slower Blucher, were held down to 25. At 8.52 the Lion was 
within 20,000 yards of the blucher, and, after deliberate 
ranging shots, scored her first hit at 9.09. As the range fur- 
ther decreased, the Tiger opened on the rear ship, and the Lion 
shifted to the third in line at 18,000 yards. The enemy re- 



THE WORLD WAR 



371 




372 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



turned the fire at 9.141. Thus the action continued, both 
squadrons in lines of bearing, and Beatty's ships engaged 
as a rule with their opposites in the enemy order. 

At 9.45 the German armored cruiser had suffered severely, 
and ships ahead also showed the effects of the heavier en- 
emy fire. Under cover of a thick smoke screen from de- 
stroyers on their starboard bow, and a subsequent destroyer 
attack, the Germans now shifted course away from the en- 
emy and the rear ships hauled out on the port quarter of their 



BrtfcisH retire hi.W. 



Heligoland 
70-100 »Y>! 




Line ofbearing im.M.-W.. 



Serm&n destroyers 



Positions about 945. 



DOGGER BANK ACTION, JAN. 24, I915 



leader to increase the range. The British cruisers, according 
to Admiral Beatty's report, "were ordered to form a line of 
bearing N.N.W., and proceed at their utmost speed." An 
hour later the Bliicher staggered away to northward. Badly 
crippled, she was assigned by Beatty to the Indomitable, and 
was sunk at 12.37. At 10.54 submarines were reported on 
the British starboard bows. 

Just after 11 the flagship Lion, having received two hits 
under water which burst a feed tank and thus put the port 
engine out of commission, turned northward out of the line. 
Though the injury was spoken of as the result of a "chance 



THE WORLD WAR 373 

shot," the Lion had been hit 15 times. About an hour later 
Admiral Beatty hoisted his flag in the Princess Royal, but 
during the remainder of the battle Rear Admiral Moore in 
the Tiger had command. Judging from the fact that the Tiger 
was hit only 8 times in the entire action and the Princess 
Royal and the New Zealand not at all, there seems to have 
been little effort at this time to press the attack. The British 
lost touch at 11.50, and turned back at noon. 

In the lively discussion aroused by the battle, the question 
was raised why the Bliicher was included in the German line. 
Any encounter that developed on such an excursion was al- 
most certain to be with superior forces, against which the 
armored cruiser would be of slight value. In a retreat, the 
"lame duck" would slow down the whole squadron, or else 
must be left behind. 

During the first hour of the battle, the British gained about 
three knots, and brought the range to 17,500 yards. The 
range after 9.45 is not given, but was certainly not lowered in 
a corresponding degree. This may have been due to increased 
speed on the part of the German leaders, or to the interference 
of German destroyers, which now figured for the first time 
as important factors in day action. Two of these attacks 
were delivered, one at 9.40 and another about an hour later, 
and though repulsed by British flotillas, they both caused in- 
terference with the British course and fire. 

The injury to the Lion, in the words of Admiral Beatty, 
"undoubtedly deprived us of a greater victory." The British 
wireless caught calls from Hipper to the High Seas Fleet, 
which (though this seems strange at the time of a battle 
cruiser sortie) is declared by the Germans to have been be- 
yond reach at Kiel. 1 Worried by the danger to the Lion in 
case of retreat before superior forces, and in the belief that 
he was being led into submarine traps and mine fields, Ad- 
miral Moore gave up the chase. The distance to Heligoland 
was still at least 70 miles; the German ships were badly in- 
jured ; the course since 9.45 had been more to the northward ; 
the Grand Fleet was rapidly approaching the scene. The 

1 Caot. Persius, Naval and Military Record, Dec. 10, 1919. 



374 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

element of caution, seen again in the Jutland battle 1 5 months; 
later, seems to have prevented pressing the engagement to 
more decisive results. 

The conditions of flight and pursuit obtaining at the Dog- 
ger Bank emphasized the importance of speed and long range 
fire. Owing to the fact that they had twice the angle of ele- 
vation (30 degrees), the German 11 -inch and 12-inch guns 
were not outranged by the British 13. 5 -inch guns; and at 
17,000 yards their projectiles had no greater angle of fall. 
The chief superiority of the larger ordnance therefore lay in 
their heavier bursting charges and greater striking energy, 
12,800 foot-tons to 8,900 foot-tons. According to a Ger- 
man report, the first salvo that hit the Seydlitz knocked out 
both after-turrets and annihilated their crews; and the ship 
was saved only by flooding the magazines. 1 

The Dardanelles Campaign 

Throughout the war a difference of opinion existed in Al- 
lied councils as to whether it was better to concentrate all 
efforts in the western sphere of operations, or to assail the 
Central Powers in the Near East as well, where the acces- 
sion of Turkey (and later of Bulgaria) threatened to put 
the resources of all southeastern Europe under Teutonic con- 
trol, and even opened a gateway into Asia. Such a division 
of effort was suggested not only by the necessity of protecting 
the Suez Canal, Egypt, and Mesopotamia, but by the difficulty 
of breaking the stalemate on the western front, and by the 
opportunity that would be offered of utilizing Allied control 
of sea communications. Furthermore, the Allies had a margin 
of predreadnoughts and cruisers ready for action and of no 
obvious value elsewhere. 

On November 3, 19 14, three days after Turkey entered the 
war, an Allied naval force that had been watching off the 
Dardanelles engaged the outer forts in a 10-minute bom- 
bardment, of no significance save perhaps as a warning to 

1 Admiral von Scheer, quoted in Naval and Military Record, London, 
March 24, 1920. 



THE WORLD WAR 375 

the Turks of trouble later on. In the same month the First 
Lord of the British Admiralty, Mr. Winston Churchill, pro- 
posed an attack on the Straits as "an ideal method of de- 
fending Egypt"; but it was not seriously considered until, 
on January 2, Russia sent an urgent appeal for a diversion 
to relieve her forces in the Caucasus. Lord Kitchener, the 
British Minister of War, answered favorably, but, feeling 
that he had no troops to spare, turned the solution over to the 
Navy. 

From the first the decision was influenced by political con- 
siderations. Russia needed assurance of Allied solidarity — 
and it is significant that in February Lord Grey announced 
that England no longer opposed Russia's ambition to con- 
trol Constantinople. Nine-tenths of Russia's exports were 
blocked by the closing of the Straits; their reopening would 
afford not only access to her vast stores of foodstuffs, but an 
entry — infinitely more convenient than Vladivostok or Arch- 
angel — for munitions and essential supplies. The Balkan 
States were wavering. In Turkey there was a strong neutral 
or pro-Ally sentiment. Victory would give an enormous 
material advantage, help Russia in the impending German 
drive on her southwestern frontier, and bolster Allied prestige 
throughout the eastern world. 

Faced with the problem, the Admiralty sent an inquiry to 
Admiral Carden, in command on the scene, as to the prac- 
ticability of forcing the Dardanelles by the use of ships alone, 
assuming that old ships would be employed, and "that the im- 
portance of the results would justify severe loss." He re- 
plied on January 5 : "I do not think the Dardanelles can 
be rushed, but they might be forced by extended operations 
with a large number of ships." In answer to further inquiries, 
accompanied by not altogether warranted assurance from the 
First Lord that "High authorities here concur in your opin- 
ion," Admiral Carden outlined four successive operations: 

(a) The destruction of defenses at the entrance to the Dar- 
danelles. 

(b) Action inside the Straits, so as to clear the defenses up 
to and including Cephez Point battery N8. 



376 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 




THE WORLD WAR 377 

(c) Destruction of defenses of the Narrows. 

(d) Sweeping of a clear channel through the mine-field 
and advance through the Narrows, followed by a reduction of 
the forts further up, and advance into the Sea of Marmora. 

This plan was presented at a meeting of the British War 
Council on January 13. It may be noted at this point that 
the War Council, though composed of 7 members of the 
Cabinet, was at this time dominated by a triumvirate — the 
Premier (Mr. Asquith), the Minister of War (General 
Kitchener), and the First Lord of the Admiralty (Mr. Church- 
ill) ; and in this triumvirate, despite the fact that England's 
strength was primarily naval, the head of the War Office 
played a leading role. The First Sea Lord (Admiral Fisher) 
and one or two other military experts attended the Council 
meetings, but they were not members, and their function, at 
least as they saw it, was "to open their mouths when told to." 
Staff organizations existed also at both the War Office and 
the Admiralty, at the latter consisting of the First Lord, First 
Sea Lord and three other officers not on the Admiralty Board. 
The working of this improvised and not altogether ideal ma- 
chinery for the supreme task of conducting the war is interest- 
ingly revealed in the report 1 of the commission subsequently 
appointed to investigate the Dardanelles Campaign. 

"Mr. Churchill," according to this report, "appears to have 
advocated the attack by ships alone before the War Council 
on a certain amount of half-hearted and hesitating expert 
opinion." Encouraged by his sanguine and aggressive spirit, 
the Council decided that "the Admiralty should prepare for 
a naval expedition in February to bombard and take the Gal- 
lipoli Peninsula with Constantinople as its objective." In 
view oi the fact that the operation as then conceived was to 
be purely naval, the word "take" suggests an initial miscon- 
ception of what the navy could do. The support for the de- 
cision, especially from the naval experts, was chiefly on the 
assumption that if Admiral Carden's first operation were un- 
promising, the whole plan might be dropped. 

1 British Annual Register, 1918, Appendix, pp. 24 ff., from which 
quotations here are taken. 



378 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

Admiral Fisher's misgivings as to the wisdom of the en- 
terprise soon increased, owing primarily to his desire to em- 
ploy the full naval strength in the home field. He did not 
believe that "cutting off the enemy's big toe in the East was 
better than stabbing him to the heart." He had begun the 
construction of 612 new vessels ranging from "hush-hush" 
ships of 33 knots and 20-inch guns to 200 motor-boats, and 
he wished to strike for access to the Baltic, with a threat of 
invasion on Germany's Baltic coast. The validity of his ob- 
jections to the Dardanelles plan appears to depend on the 
practicability of this alternative, which was not attempted later 
in the war. The First Lord and the First Sea Lord presented 
their difference of opinion to the Premier, but it appears that 
there was no ill feeling; Admiral Fisher later writes that 
"Churchill had courage and imagination — he was a war man." 

At a Council meeting on January 28, when the decision 
was made definite, Admiral Fisher was not asked for an opin- 
ion and expressed none. (The Investigation Commission de- 
clare that the naval experts should have been asked, and should 
have expressed their views whether asked or not.) But there 
was a dramatic moment when, after rising as if to leave the 
Council, he was quickly followed by Lord Kitchener, who 
pointed out that all the others were in favor of the plan, and 
induced him once more to take his seat. After the decision, 
Mr. Churchill testifies, "I never looked back. We had left 
the region of discussion and consultation, of balancings and 
misgivings. The matter had now passed into the domain of 
action." 

To turn to the scene of operations, there were now as- 
sembled at the Dardanelles 10 British and 4 French predread- 
noughts, together with the new battleship Queen Elisabeth, 
the battle cruiser Inflexible, and many cruisers and torpedo 
craft. On February 19, 191 5, again on February 25-26, and 
on March 1-7, this force bombarded the outer forts at Kum 
Kale and Sedd-el-Bahr and the batteries 10 miles further up 
at Cephez Point. These were in part silenced and demolished 
by landing parties. Bad weather, however, interfered with 
operations, and there was also some shortage of ammunition. 



THE WORLD WAR 379 

The batteries, and especially the mobile artillery of the Turks, 
still greatly hampered the work of mine sweeping, which at 
terrible hazards was carried on at night within the Straits. 

In the meantime the Government, to quote General Callwell, 
the Director of Military Operations, had "drifted into a big 
military attack." But the despatch from England of the 29th 
Division, which was to join the forces available in Egypt, was 
delayed, owing to Lord Kitchener's concern about the western 
situation, from Feb. 22 to March 16 — an unfortunate loss of 
time. By March 1 7, however, the troops from Egypt and most 
of the French contingent were assembled at the island of Lem- 
nos, and General Sir Ian Hamilton had arrived to take com- 
mand. His instructions included the statement that "em- 
ployment of military forces on any large scale at this junc- 
ture is only contemplated in the event of the fleet failing to 
get through after every effort has been exhausted. Having 
entered on the project of forcing the Straits, there can be no 
idea of abandoning the scheme." 

On March 11 the First Lord sent to Admiral Carden a, 
despatch asking whether the time had not arrived when "you 
will have to press hard for a decision," and adding: "Every 
well-conceived action for forcing a decision, even should re- 
grettable losses be entailed, will receive our support." The Ad- 
miral replied concurring, but expressing the opinion that "in 
order to insure my communication line immediately fleet enters 
Sea of Marmora, military operations should be opened at 
once." On March 16 he resigned owing to ill health, and 
his second in command, Admiral de Robeck, succeeded, with 
the feeling that he had orders to force the Straits. 

The att ack of March 18 was the crucial and, as it proved, 
the final action of the purely naval campaign. At this time the 
mines had been swept as far up as Cephez Point, and a clear 
channel opened for some distance beyond. During the morn- 
ing the Queen Elisabeth and 5 other ships bombarded the Nar- 
rows forts at 14,000 yards. Then at 12.22 the French pre- 
dreadnoughts Stiff r en, Gaulois, Charlemagne, and Bouvet ap- 
proached to about 9000 yards and by 1.25 had for the time 
being silenced the batteries at the Narrows. Six British bat- 



380 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



tleships now advanced (2.36) to relieve the French. In the 
maneuvering and withdrawal, the Bouvet was sunk by a drift- 




DARDANELLES DEFENSES 

ing mine 1 with a loss of over 600 men, and the Gaulois was 
hit twice under water and had to be beached on an island 

1 It is stated that an ingenious device caused these mines to sink after a 
certain time and come back on an under-current that flows up the Dar- 
danelles, and then rise at the Narrows for recovery. This may have en- 
abled the Turks to keep up their presumably limited supply of mines; 
but how well the automatic control worked is not known. 



THE WORLD WAR 381 

outside the Straits. About 4 o'clock the Irresistible also ran 
foul of a mine and was run ashore on the Asiatic side, where 
most of her men were taken off under fire. The Ocean, after 
going to her assistance, struck a mine and went down about 
6 o'clock. Not more than 40 per cent, of the injuries sus- 
tained in the action were attributable to gunfire, the rest to 
mines sent adrift from the Narrows. Of the 16 capital ships 
engaged, three were sunk, one had to be beached, and some 
of the others were hardly ready for continuing the action next 
day. 

There is some military support for the opinion that if, on 
the 1 8th or at some more suitable time, the fleet had acted in 
the spirit of Farragut's "Damn the torpedoes! Full steam 
ahead !" and, protected by dummy ships, bumpers, or whatever 
other devices naval ingenuity could devise, had steamed up to 
and through the Narrows in column, it would not have suf- 
fered much more severely than during the complicated ma- 
neuvering below. Of such an attack General von der Goltz, 
in command of the Turkish army, said that, "Although he 
thought it was almost impossible to force the Dardanelles, if 
the English thought it an important move in the general war, 
they could by sacrificing ten ships force the entrance, and do 
it very fast, and be up in Marmora within 10 hours from the 
time they forced it." 1 Admiral Fisher estimated that the loss 
would be 12 ships. 

After such deductions, there would be no great surplus to 
deal with the Goben, which would fight desperately, and with 
the defenses of Constantinople. Indeed, such losses would 
seem absolutely prohibitive, if viewed only from the narrow 
standpoint of the force engaged, and without taking into full- 
est account the limited value of the older ships and the fact 
that the Government was fully committed to a prosecution of 
the campaign. It is of course easy to see that victory pur- 
chased by the loss of 10 predreadnoughts and 10,000 men 
would be cheap, as compared with the sacrifice of over 100,000 

1 Repeated by Baron von Wangenheim to Ambassador Morgenthau, 
prior to the attack of March 18, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, 
World's Work, September, 19 18. See also Col. F. N. Maude, Royal En- 
gineers, Contemporary Review, June, 1915. 



382 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

men killed and wounded and 10,000 invalided in the later cam- 
paign on land. 

General Callwell has pointed out that the naval command- 
ers were properly worried about what would happen after they 
got through the Straits, if the Sublime Porte should not 
promptly "throw up the sponge." "The communications 
would have remained closed to colliers and small craft by 
movable armament, if not also by mines. Forcing the pass 
would in fact have resembled bursting through a swing door. 
Sailors and soldiers alike have an instinctive horror of a trap, 
and they are in the habit of looking behind them as well as 
before them." x But according to Ambassador Morgenthau, 
who was probably in a better position than any one else to 
form an opinion, "The whole Ottoman State on the 18th day 
of March, 191 5, was on the brink of dissolution." The Turk- 
ish Government was divided into factions and restive under 
German domination, and there was thus an excellent prospect 
that it would have capitulated under the guns of the Allied 
fleet. If not, then there might have been nothing left for the 
latter but to try to get back the way it came. 

Feeling in Constantinople during the month from February 
19th to March 19th has already been suggested; it was nervous 
in the extreme. Neither Turks nor Germans felt assured that 
the Dardanelles could withstand British naval power. Plans 
were made for a general exit to Asia Minor, and there was a 
conviction that in a few days Allied ships would be in the 
Golden Horn. At the forts, if we may believe evidence not as 
yet definitely disproved, affairs were still more desperate. The 
guns, though manned largely by Germans, were not of the 
latest type, and for a month had been engaged in almost daily 
bombardment. Ammunition was running short. "Fort Ham- 
adie, the most powerful defense on the Asiatic side, had just 
17 armor-piercing projectiles left, while at Killid-ul-Bahr, 
the main defense on the European side, there were pre- 
cisely 10." 2 To this evidence may be added the statement of 

1 Nineteenth Century and After, March, 1919, p. 486. 

"Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, World's Work, September, 19,18, 
P- 433. corroborating the statement of the correspondent G. A. Schreiner, 
in From Berlin to Bagdad. 



THE WORLD WAR 383 

Enver Pasha: "If the English had only had the courage to 
rush more ships through the Dardanelles they could have got 
to Constantinople, but their delay enabled us to fortify the 
peninsula, and in 6 weeks' time we had taken down there 
over 200 Austrian Skoda guns." 

If Mr. Churchill was chiefly responsible for undertaking 
the campaign, he was not responsible for the delay after March 
18. "It never occurred to me," he states, "that we should 
not go on." Admiral de Robeck in his first despatches ap- 
peared to share this view. On March 26, however, he tele- 
graphed: "The check on March 18 is not, in my opinion, 
decisive, but on March 22 I met General Hamilton and heard 
his views, and I now think that, to obtain important results and 
to achieve the object of the campaign, a combined operation 
will be essential." This despatch, Mr. Churchill says, "in- 
volved a complete change of plan and was a vital decision. 
I regretted it very much. I believed then, as I believe now, 
that we were separated by very little from complete success." 
He proposed that the Admiral should be directed to renew the 
attack ; but the First Sea Lord did not agree, nor did Admiral 
Sir Arthur Wilson, nor Admiral Sir Henry Jackson. So it was 
decided to wait for the army, and some satire has been directed 
at Mr. Churchill and those other "acknowledged experts in 
the technicalities of amphibious warfare," Mr. Balfour and 
Mr. Asquith, who were inclined to share his views. The ver- 
dict of the Dardanelles Commission was that, "Had the at- 
tack been renewed within a day or two there is no reason to 
suppose that the proportion of casualties would have been 
less; and, if so, even had the second attack succeeded, a very 
weak force would have been left for subsequent naval opera- 
tions." 

Once decided upon, it was highly essential that the com- 
bined operation should begin without further delay. But it 
was now found that the army transports had been loaded, so to 
speak, up-side-down, with guns and munitions buried under 
tents and supplies. Sending them back to Alexandria for re- 
loading involved a six weeks' delay, though Lord Kitchener 
wired, "I think you had better know at once that I regard 



384 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

such postponement as far too long." The landing on the tip 
of the Gallipoli Peninsula, which was nearest the forts in the 
Straits and said to be the only feasible place, actually began 
on April 25, and was achieved under the guns of the fleet, and 
by almost unexampled feats of heroism by boats' crews and 
the first parties on shore. 

Henceforth the navy played a subordinate though not in- 
significant part in the campaign. "By our navy we went there 
and were kept there," writes Mr. John Masefield in Gallipoli, 
"and by our navy we came away. During the nine months 
of our hold on the peninsula over 300,000 men were brought 
by the navy from places three, four, or even six thousand miles 
away. During the operations some half of these were re- 
moved by our navy, as sick and wounded, to ports from 800 
to 3000 miles away. Every day, for 11 months, ships of 
our navy moved up and down the Gallipoli coast bombarding 
the Turk positions. Every day during the operations our navy 
kept our armies in food, drink and supplies. Every day, in 
all that time, if weather permitted, ships of our navy cruised 
in the Narrows and of! Constantinople, and the seaplanes of 
our navy raided and scouted within the Turk lines." 

On May 12 the predreadnought Goliath was torpedoed by a 
Turkish destroyer; and on May 25-26 the German submarine 
U 23, which had made the long voyage by way of Gibraltar, 
sank the Triumph and the Majestic. It was upon a fore- 
warning of this attack that Admiral Fisher, according to his 
own statement, resigned as a protest against the retention of 
the Queen Elisabeth and other capital units in this unprom- 
ising field. British and French submarines, on the other hand, 
worked their way into the Sea of Marmora, entered the har- 
bor of Constantinople, and inflicted heavy losses, including 
two Turkish battleships, 8 transports, and 197 supply vessels. 

So almost unprecedented were the problems of a naval at- 
tack on the Dardanelles that it appears rash to condemn either 
the initiation or the conduct of an operation that ended in 
failure when seemingly on the verge of success. Clearly, the 
campaign was handicapped by lack of unanimous support and 
whole-hearted faith on the part of authorities at home. It was 



THE WORLD WAR 385 

not thoroughly thought out at the start, and was subjected to 
trying delays. No advantage was ever taken of the invalu- 
able factor of surprise. Even so, it was not wholly barren of 
results. It undoubtedly relieved Russia, kept Bulgaria neu- 
tral for at least five months, and immobilized 300,000 Turks, 
according to Lord Kitchener's estimate, for nine months' time. 
Nevertheless, the final failure was a tremendous blow to Allied 
prestige. Upon the withdrawal, in January of 19 16, some of 
the troops were transferred to Salonika; and it is noteworthy 
that in Macedonia, as at Gallipoli, the army was dependent 
on the navy for the transport of troops, munitions, and in fact 
virtually everything needed in the campaign. 

Aside from the Dardanelles failure, the naval situation at 
the end of 1915 was such as to give assurance to the Western 
Powers. They had converted potential control of the sea into 
actual control, save in limited areas on the enemies' sea fron- 
tiers. Germany had lost her cruisers and her colonies, and 
her shipping had been destroyed or driven from the seas. 
Though losses from submarines averaged 150,000 tons a 
month in 191 5, they had not yet caused genuine alarm. The 
German fleet was still a menace, but, in spite of attrition war- 
fare, the Grand Fleet was decidedly stronger than in 1914. 

REFERENCES 

British Official Naval History, Sir Julian Corbett, London, 

1920. 
The Grand Fleet, Admiral Jellicoe, London, 1918. 
The British Navy in Battle, Arthur H. Pollen, London, 1919. 
My Memoirs, Admiral von Tirpitz, 1919. 
The German High Seas Fleet in the World War, Vice Admiral 

von Scheer, 1920. 
U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, War Notes, 1914-1918. 
Les Enseignements Maritimes de la Guerre Anti-Germanique, 

Admiral Daveluy, Paris, 1919. 
Il Potere Marittimo nella Grande Guerra, Captain Romeo Bern- 

otti, Leghorn, 1920. 
Naval Power in the War, Commander C. C. Gill, New York, 

1918. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE WORLD WAR [Continued] : THE BATTLE OF 

JUTLAND 

There was only one action between the British Grand Fleet 
and the German High Seas Fleet in the World War, the bat- 
tle of Jutland. This was indecisive, but even in a history with 
the limits of this book it deserves a chapter of its own. In 
the magnitude of the forces engaged, a magnitude less in 
numbers of ships — great as that was — than in the enormous 
destructive power concentrated in those ships, it was by far 
the greatest naval battle in history. Moreover, this was the 
one fleet battle fought with the weapons of to-day. Any dis- 
cussion of modern tactics, therefore, must be based for some 
time to come on an analysis of Jutland. Finally, the inde- 
cisiveness of the action has resulted in a controversy among 
naval critics that is likely to continue indefinitely. Meanwhile 
the debatable points are rich in interest and suggestion. 

In earlier wars the nation with a more powerful fleet block- 
aded the ports of the enemy. In this war the sea mine, the 
submarine, the aircraft and the long-range gun of coast de- 
fenses made the old-fashioned close blockade impossible. Such 
blockade as could be maintained under modern conditions had 
to be "distant." The British made a base in the Orkneys, 
Scapa Flow, which had central position with relation to a pos- 
sible sortie of the German fleet toward either the North At- 
lantic or the Channel. The intervening space of North Sea 
was patrolled by a scouting force of light vessels of various 
sorts and periodical sweeps by the Grand Fleet. On May 
30, 19 1 6, the Grand Fleet, under Admiral Jellicoe, set out 
from its base at Scapa Flow for one of these patrolling 
cruises. On the same day Vice Admiral Beatty left his base 

386 



THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND 387 

at Rosyth (in the Firth of Forth) with his advance force of 
battle cruisers and battleships, under orders to join Jellicoe 
at sea. On the following- day the High Seas Fleet took the 
sea and the two great forces came together in battle. 

It is not certain why the German fleet should have been 
cruising at this time. Having declined to offer battle in the 
summer of 1914, on account of the British superiority of 
force, the High Command could hardly have contemplated at- 
tacking in 1 91 6 when the odds were much heavier. From 
statements published by German officers since the war, the ob- 
jects seem to have been, first, to prevent a suspected attempt 
to force an entrance into the Baltic; secondly, to fall upon 
Beatty's Battle Cruiser Squadron, during its frequent patrol- 
ling cruises, when it was detached from the main force ; and, 
thirdly, to destroy the British trading fleets which were con- 
ducting an important volume of commerce from the ports 
of Norway with England and Russia. It is not easy to see, 
however, why the High Seas Fleet should be sent out on a 
mere commerce destroying raid. The Germans had been out 
twice before, since April 1st of that year, and probably it was 
considered good policy to send the fleet to sea every now and 
then for the moral effect. The people could not relish the 
idea of their navy being condemned to inaction in their own 
harbors, and there was bad feeling over the fact that the 
government had just yielded to President Wilson's protest on 
ruthless submarine warfare. A victory over Beatty's battle 
cruisers, or some other detached unit of the British fleet, would 
have been very opportune in bracing German morale. At the 
same time Admiral von Scheer had probably reckoned on be- 
ing able to avoid battle with the Grand Fleet by means of a 
swift retreat under cover of smoke screens and torpedo attacks. 
Certainly the odds were too heavy to permit of any other 
policy on his part. 

The First Phase 

At 2 p. m. of the 31st of May, 1916, the British main fleet, 
under Admiral Jellicoe, was in Latitude 57 57' N., Longi- 
tude 3 45' E. (off the coast of Norway), holding a south- 



388 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 






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CRUISING FORMATION OF THE BRITISH BATTLE FLEET 

(After diagram by Lieut. -Comdr. H. H. Frost, U.S.N., 17. 5. Nawi/ Institute Pro- 
ceedings, Nov., /pip.) 
Forces: 

24 Dreadnought Battleships 

3 Battle Cruisers 
12 Light Cruisers 

8 Armored Cruisers 
5 1 Destroyers 
Note: One destroyer accompanied each armored cruiser. 



easterly course. It consisted of 24 battleships formed in a line 
of six divisions screened by destroyers and light cruisers, as 
indicated in the accompanying diagram. Sixteen miles ahead 
of the battle fleet was the First Cruiser Squadron under Rear 
Admiral Arbuthnot and the Second Cruiser Squadron under 
Rear Admiral Heath; these consisted of four armored cruis- 
ers each. They were spread out at intervals of six miles, 
with the Hampshire six miles astern of the Minotaur to serve 
as link ship for signals to and from the main fleet. Four 
miles ahead was the Third Battle Cruiser Squadron of three 
ships under Rear Admiral Hood. These were steaming in col- 



THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND 389 

umn, screened by four destroyers and two light cruisers (Ches- 
ter and Canterbury) . The diagram on p. 388 shows the com- 
plete formation of the Battle Fleet and Cruiser Squadrons, 
under Admiral Jellicoe's personal command. It is interesting 
as an example of the extreme complexity of fleet formation 
under modern conditions, especially when it is realized that the 




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beatty's cruising FORMATION, 2 P. M. 

(After diagrams by Lieut.-Comdr. H. H. Frost, U.S.N. , U. S. Naval Institute Pro- 
ceedings, Nov., 1919.) 

whole fleet was proceeding on its base course by zigzagging. 
Seventy-seven miles to the southward Vice Admiral Beatty, 
commanding the scouting force, was heading on a northeast- 
erly course. His force was spread out in scouting formation. 
The First Battle Cruiser Squadron of four ships, headed by 
the flagship Lion, was flanked three miles to the eastward by 
the Second Battle Cruiser Squadron of two ships, and five 
miles to the north by the Fifth Battle Squadron, con- 
sisting of four of the finest battleships in the fleet, 2 5 -knot 



390 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

Queen Elizabeths, under Rear Admiral Evan-Thomas. Each 
of these squadrons had its screen of destroyers and light cruis- 
ers. Eight miles to the south the First, Second, and Third 
Light Cruiser Squadrons were spread out in line at five-mile 
intervals. The formation is made clear by the accompanying 
diagram. 

At the same hour, 2 p. m., Vice Admiral Hipper, with the 
German scouting force, was heading north about 15 to 20 
miles to the southeast of Beatty. Hipper commanded the 
First Battle Cruiser Squadron, consisting of the Lutzow 
(flag), DerfHinger, Seydlitz, Moltke, and Von der Tann, ac- 
companied by a screening force of four or five light cruisers 
and about 15 destroyers. Fifty miles south of this advance 
force was the main body of the High Seas Fleet under Vice 
Admiral von Scheer. It consisted of three battle squadrons 
arranged apparently in one long column of 22 ships escorted 
by a screen of 62 destroyers, eight or ten light cruisers, and 
the one remaining armored cruiser in the German navy, the 
Roon. 

Thus the stage was set and the characters disposed for the 
great naval drama of that day. 

At 2.20 the light cruiser Galatea (v. diagram), which lay 
farthest to the east of Beatty 's force, reported two German 
light cruisers engaged in boarding a neutral steamer. Beatty 
thereupon changed course toward Horn Reef Lightship in or- 
der to cut them off from their base, his light cruisers of the 
first and third divisions spreading out as a screen to the east- 
ward. It would be interesting to know why, at this point, 
he did not draw in his battleships and thus concentrate his 
force, for when he did establish contact with the Germans, 
Evan-Thomas's squadron was too far away for effective sup- 
port. Ten minutes later Hipper got word of British light 
cruisers and destroyers sighted to the westward and, chang- 
ing course to northwest, he headed for them at high speed. 
• At 2.45 Beatty sent out a seaplane from the Engadine to as- 
certain the enemy's position. This is the first instance in naval 
history of a fleet scouting by means of aircraft. The airplane 
came close enough to the enemy to draw the fire of four light 



THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND 



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392 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



cruisers, and returning reported their position. Meanwhile 
the Galatea had reported heavy smoke "as from a fleet." 

At the first report from the Galatea, which had been in- 
tercepted on the flagship, Iron Duke, Jellicoe ordered full speed, 
and despatched ahead the Third Battle Cruiser Squadron, un- 
der Hood, to cut off the escape of the Germans to the Skager- 
rak, as Beatty was then heading to cut them off from their 
bases to the south. Admiral Scheer, also, on getting report of 
the English cruisers, quickened the speed of his main fleet. 

At 3.30 Beatty and Hipper discovered each other's battle 
cruiser forces. Hipper turned about and headed on a south- 
erly course to lead the British toward the advancing main fleet. 
Beatty also turned, forming his battle cruisers on a line of bear- 
ing to clear the smoke, and the two forces approached each 
other on converging courses as indicated in the diagram. 

At this point it is worth while to compare the two battle 
cruiser forces i 1 



BRITISH 



GERMAN 



Name 



Armor 



Queen Mary. 

Lion 

Tiger 

Princess Royal 
Indefatigable . 
New Zealand . 



Displace- 
ment 

26,350 
26,350 
28,500 
28,350 
18,800 
18,800 

145.150 



Guns 

8 13.5" 
8 13-5" 
8 13.5" 
8 13.5' 
8 12" 
8 12" 



Armor 



Name 

Liitzow. . . 
Derfflinger 
Seydlitz. . . 

Moltke 

VonderTann 10* 



11 



Displace- 
ment 

26,180 
26,180 
24,610 
22,640 
19,100 



118,710 



Guns 

8 12" 

8 12" 

10 u" 

10 11* 

11" 



A glance shows the superiority of the British in guns and 
the German superiority in armor. The British had six ships 
to the German five, and if the four new battleships of Evan- 
Thomas's division could be effectively brought into action, the 
British superiority in force would be reckoned as considerably 
more than two to one. These battleships had 13" armor, 
eight 15" guns each, and a speed of 25 knots. They were 
the most powerful ships afloat. 

In speed, Beatty had a marked advantage. He could make 

29 knots with all six of his cruisers and 32 knots with his four 

1 Table from Lieut. Comdr. H. H. Frost, U. S. N., U. S. Naval Insti- 
tute Proceedings, Nov., 1919, p. 850. 



THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND 



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394 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

best, — Queen Mary, Tiger, Lion, and Princess Royal. Hip- 
per's squadron could make but 28 knots, though the Lutzow 
and Derfflinger were probably capable of 30. 

At 3.48 British and German battle cruisers opened fire. Ac- 
cording to Beatty's report the range at this moment was 18,500 
yards. Beatty then turned to starboard, assuming a course 
nearly parallel to that of Hipper. Almost immediately, three 
minutes after the first salvo, the Lion, the Tiger, and the 
Princess Royal were hit by shells. In these opening minutes 
the fire of the Germans seems to have been fast and astonish- 
ingly accurate. The Lion was hit repeatedly, and at four 
o'clock the roof of one of her turrets was blown off. It is 
said that the presence of mind and heroic self-sacrifice of an 
officer saved the ship from the fate that subsequently over- 
whelmed two of her consorts. By this time the range had 
decreased to 16,000 yards (British reckoning) and Beatty 
shifted his course more to the south to confuse the enemy's 
fire control. Apparently this move did not succeed in its pur- 
pose for at 4.06 a salvo struck the Indefatigable on a line with 
her after turret, and exploded a magazine. As she staggered 
out of column and began sinking, another salvo smashed into 
her forward decks and she rolled over and sank like a stone. 

About this time the Fifth Battle Squadron came into action, 
but it was not able to do effective service. The range was 
extreme, about 20,000 yards, and being some distance astern 
of the battle cruisers, on account of its inferior speed, it had 
to contend with the battle smoke of the squadron ahead as 
well as the gradually thickening atmospheric conditions. In 
addition the Germans frequently laid smoke screens and zig- 
zagged. Evan-Thomas's division never saw more than two 
enemy ships at a time. 

The shift of course taken by Beatty at four o'clock, accom- 
panied possibly by a corresponding shift of Hipper, opened the 
range so far in a few minutes that fire slackened on both sides. 
Beatty then swung to port in order to close to effective range. 
At 4.15 his destroyers, twelve in all, acting on the general 
order to attack when conditions were favorable, dashed out 
toward the German line. At the same instant the German de- 



THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND 395 

stroyers, to the number of fifteen accompanied by the light 
cruiser Regensburg, advanced toward the British line, both 
forces maneuvering to get on the bows of the opposing battle 
cruisers. For this purpose the British flotilla was better placed 
because their battle cruisers were well ahead of the Germans. 
The German destroyers, therefore, concentrated their efforts 




BATTLE OF JUTLAND, FIRST PHASE 
Action Between Battle Cruiser Forces. 



on the battleship division, which turned away to avoid the 
torpedoes. In numbers the advantage lay with the Germans, 
and a fiercely contested action took place between the lines 
conducted with superb gallantry on both sides. The Germans 
succeeded in breaking up the British attack at a cost of two 
destroyers. Two of the British destroyers also were ren- 
dered unmanageable and sank later when the High Seas Fleet 
arrived on the scene. 



396 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

Meanwhile, at 4.26, just before the destroyers clashed, a 
salvo struck the Queen Mary, blew up a magazine, and she 
disappeared with practically all on board. Thus the second 
of Beatty's battle cruisers was sent to the bottom with tragic 
suddenness. 

At 4.38, Commodore Goodenough, commanding the Sec- 
ond Light Cruiser Squadron, who was scouting ahead of the 
battle cruisers, reported that the German battle fleet was in 
sight steering north, and gave its position. Beatty at once 
called in his destroyers and turned his ships in succession, 
sixteen points to starboard, ordering Evan-Thomas to turn 
similarly. Thus the capital ships turned right about on the 
opposite course, the battleships following the cruisers as before, 
and all heading for the main fleet which was then about fifty 
miles away to the north. Commodore Goodenough at this 
point used his initiative in commendable fashion. Without 
orders he kept on to the south to establish contact with the 
German battle fleet and hung on its flanks near enough to 
report its position to the commander in chief. He underwent 
a heavy fire, but handled his frail ships so skillfully as to 
escape serious loss. At the same time the constant maneuver- 
ing he was forced to perform or a defect in the British system 
of communication made his reports of bearing seriously in- 
accurate. Whatever the cause, this error created a difficulty 
for the commander in chief, who, fifty miles away, was trying 
to locate the enemy for attack by the Grand Fleet. 

The Second Phase 

The northward run of the British advance force and the 
German advance force, followed by their main fleet, was un- 
eventful. The situation was at this stage exactly reversed. 
Beatty was endeavoring to lead the German forces into the 
guns of the Grand Fleet, while ostensibly he was attempting 
to escape from a superior force, much as Hipper had been 
doing with relation to Scheer during the first phase. Beatty's 
four remaining battle cruisers continued to engage the five 
German battle cruisers, at a range of 14,000 yards, assisted 



THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND 397 

by the two leading ships of Evan-Thomas's Battle Squadron. 
The other two battleships engaged the head of the advancing 
German battle fleet at the extreme range of 19,000 yards as 
often as they could make out their enemy. The visibility grew 
worse and apparently neither side scored on the other. 

As the British main fleet was reported somewhat to the 
east of Beatty's position, he bore toward that quarter; and 
Hipper, to avoid being "T-d" by his enemy, turned to the 
eastward correspondingly. The mistiness increased to such 
a degree that shortly after five o'clock Beatty lost sight of the 
enemy's battle cruisers and ceased fire for half an hour. Be- 
tween 5.40 and six o'clock, however, conditions were better 
and firing was opened again by the British ships, apparently 
with good effect. Meanwhile clashes had already taken place 
between the light cruiser Chester, attached to the Third Battle 
Squadron of the main fleet, and the light cruisers of the 
enemy, which were far in advance of their battle cruisers. 

The Third Phase 

We have already noted that as soon as Jellicoe learned of 
the presence of the enemy he ordered Hood, with the Third 
Battle Cruiser Squadron, to cut off the German retreat to the 
Skaggerrack and to support Beatty. Hood's course had taken 
him well to the east of where the action' was in progress. At 
5.40 he saw the flashes of guns far to the northwest, and 
immediately changed course in that direction. Fifteen min- 
utes later he was able to open fire on German light cruisers, 
with his four destroyers darting ahead to attack with torpedoes. 
These light cruisers, which had just driven off the Chester 
with heavy losses, discharged torpedoes at Hood's battle cruis- 
ers and turned away. The latter shifted helm to avoid them 
and narrowly missed being hit. One torpedo indeed passed 
under the Invincible. 

At this point another group of four German light cruisers 
appeared and Hood's destroyers advanced to attack them. 
The fire of the cruisers damaged two destroyers though not 
before one of them, the Shark, had torpedoed the German 



398 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

cruiser Rostock. The Shark herself was in turn torpedoed 
and sunk by a German destroyer. At about the same time 
action had begun between the ships of the armored cruiser 
squadron under Arbuthnot and another squadron of German 
light cruisers. 

A moment later (at 5.56) Beatty sighted the leaders of the 
Grand Fleet and knew that contact with his support was es- 
tablished. At once he changed course to about due east and 
put on full speed in order to head off the German line, and 
by taking position to the eastward, allow the battle fleet to 
form line astern of his battle cruisers. Such an overwhelm- 
ing force was now concentrated on the German light cruisers 
that they turned back. Of their number the Wiesbaden had 
been disabled by a concentration of fire and the Rostock tor- 
pedoed. Hipper then made a turn of 180 with his battle 
cruisers in order to get back to the support of the battleships 
which he had left far to the rear. Then he turned round 
again, and continued to lead the German advance. All this 
time he seems to have had no suspicion that the Grand Fleet 
was in the neighborhood. 

As Beatty dashed across the front of the approaching bat- 
tle fleet he sighted Hood's Third Battle Cruiser Squadron 
ahead of him and signaled him to take station ahead. Ac- 
cordingly Hood countermarched and led Beatty's line in the 
Invincible. Evan-Thomas was by this time so far in the 
rear of the speedier battle cruisers that he was unable to fol- 
low with Beatty, and in order to avoid confusion with the 
oncoming battle fleet he turned left 90 ° in order to form astern 
of the Sixth Battle Division, by this move, however, leaving 
Beatty's cruisers unsupported. Meanwhile the armored cruis- 
ers of Arbuthnot were already under fire from Hipper' s squad- 
ron and suffering severely. At 6.16 the Defense, the flagship 
of the squadron, blew up; the Warrior was badly disabled, 
and the Black Prince was so crippled as to be sunk during the 
night action. As Evan-Thomas made his turn, one of his 
battleships, the Warspite, was struck by a shell that jammed 
her steering gear in such a way as to send her head on toward 
the Germans. She served to shield the Warrior from destruc- 



THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND 



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A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



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BATTLE OF JUTLAND, MAY 31, 1916 
2nd and 3rd Phases 



THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND 401 

tion, but suffered thirty hits from heavy projectiles before she 
was brought under control and taken out of action. 

Between six and 6.15 Jellicoe received bearings from Vice 
Admiral Burney (of the Sixth Battle Division), Evan-Thomas, 
and Beatty which enabled him for the first time to plot accu- 
rately the position of the German battle fleet. This informa- 
tion revealed the fact that previous plotting based on bearings 
coming from Goodenough and others was seriously wrong. 
The Germans were twelve miles to the west of where they 
were supposed to be. Jellicoe then formed line of battle, 
not on the starboard wing, which was nearest the head of 
~ theTjef nTarradvance, but on the port wing, which was farthest j 
away, and speed was reduced to 14 knots in order to enable / 
the battle cruisers to take, station at the head of the line. In- 
deed some of the ships in the rear or sixth division had to 
stop their engines to avoid collision during deployment. By 
this time the ships of the sixth division began to come under 
the shells of the German battle fleet and they returned the 
fire. By half past six all sixteen of the German dreadnoughts 
were firing at the British lines, the slow predreadnoughts be- 
ing so far to the rear as to be unable to take part. The 
battleship fire, however, neither at this point nor later showed 
the extraordinary accuracy displayed by the battle cruisers at 
the beginning, but this may possibly be attributed to the 
gathering mistiness that hung over the sea, darkened by the 
low-lying smoke from the host of ships. 

As soon as Scheer realized that he had not only run right 
into the arms of the Grand Fleet, but lay in the worst tactical 
position imaginable with an overwhelming force concentrated 
on the head of his line, he turned away to escape. The bat- 
tle cruisers (at 6.30) swung away sharply from east to south, 
the ships turning in succession. Meanwhile the torpedo flotillas 
tried to cover the turn by a gallant attack on the British 
battle line. At the same time smoke screens also were laid to 
cover the retirement. The Invincible, Hood's flagship, which 
was leading the British line, was at this juncture struck by a 
shell that penetrated her armor and exploded a magazine. 
The ship instantly broke in two and went to the bottom, and 



402 



A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 




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THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND 403 

only four officers and two men were saved. Almost at the 
same instant trie German battle cruiser Lutzow, Hipper's flag- 
ship, was so badly disabled by shells and torpedo that she fell 
out of line helpless. Hipper managed, however, to board a 
destroyer and shift his flag to the Moltke without loss of time 
or command. 1 

At 6.35 Scheer performed a difficult maneuver that the fleet 
had practiced for just the situation that existed at this time. 
He wheeled his battleships simultaneously to starboard, form- 
ing line again on a westerly course. Twenty minutes later, 
finding that he was no longer under fire from the Grand Fleet, 
he repeated the maneuver, the ships turning again to starboard 
and forming line ahead again on an easterly, then southerly 
course. These changes of course were made under cover of 
smoke screens and were not observed by the British. 

By this time the Grand Fleet had formed line of battle 
on a southeasterly course and by 7.10 its leaders were con- 
centrating their fire on the head of the German line, which 
was now caught under an overwhelming superiority of force. 
Unfortunately for the Germans the visibility conditions at this 
time were worse for them than for their enemy, for while the 
British ships were nearly or quite invisible, the Germans every 
now and then stood silhouetted against the western sky. The 
British fire at this time was heavy and accurate. The Ger- 
man fleet seemed marked for destruction. 

For Scheer it was now imperative to withdraw if he could. 
Accordingly at this juncture he sent out a flotilla of destroyers 
in a desperate effort to cover the retreat of his fleet. They 
fired a number of torpedoes at the English battle line, and 
retired with the loss of one boat. Their stroke succeeded, for 
Jellicoe turned his whole line of battleships away to avoid 
the torpedoes. Beatty, holding his course at the head of the 
line, signaled Admiral Jerram of the King George V to fol- 
low astern, but he was evidently bound to the orders of his 

1 It may be interesting to note the difference between this transfer and 
that of Beatty at Dogger Bank. The latter dropped out of the action 
and relinquished active command, a matter of crucial importance in 
that action. 



404 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

commander in chief. For the second time that day Beatty was 
left unsupported in his fight at the head of the line. 

Meanwhile Scheer's capital ships had simultaneously wheeled 
away in line to the westward under cover of the torpedo attacks 
and smoke screens made by the destroyers. This was the third 
time within an hour that they had effected this maneuver, 
and the skill with which the battleships managed these turns 
in line under a rain of fire speaks well for German seaman- 
ship. Meanwhile, to reenforce the covering movement made 
by the destroyers, Scheer sent out his battle cruisers in a 
sortie against Beatty, who was pressing hard on the head of 
the German line. The following account from Commander von 
Hase of the Derfflinger, which led this sortie, is interesting 
not only for its description of what occurred at this time but 
also as a picture of a personal experience of the terrific fire 
that the battle cruisers of both sides had to sustain throughout 
the greater part of the engagement. It was on them that the 
brunt of the fighting fell. The narrative is quoted from the 
pages of the Naval and Military Record : 

"By now our Commander-in-Chief had realized the danger 
threatening our fleet, the van of which was enclosed in a 
semicircle by the hostile fleet. We were, in fact, absolutely 
'in the soup' (in absoluten Wurstkessel) ! There was only one 
way to get clear of this tactically disadvantageous position : 
to turn the whole fleet about and steer on an opposite course. 
First to evade this dangerous encirclement. But the maneuver 
must be unobserved and executed without interference. The 
battle-cruisers and torpedo-boats must cover the movement of 
the fleet. At about 1 9.12 the Commander-in-Chief made the 
signal to alter course, and almost simultaneously made by 
W/T [wireless] the historic signal to the battle-cruisers and 
torpedo-boats: 'Charge the enemy!' (Ran an den Feind!) 
Without turning a hair the captain ordered 'Full speed ahead, 
course south-east.' Followed by the Seydlitz, Moltke, and 
Von der Tann, we steamed at first south-east, then, from 9.15 
onward, directly towards the head of the enemy's line. 

"And now an infernal fire was opened on us, especially 

1 There was a difference of two hours in time between the German and 
the English standard. 



THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND 405 

on the DerMinger, as leading ship. Several ships were con- 
centrating their fire upon us. I selected a target and fired as 
rapidly as possible. The range closed from 12,000 to 8,000 
meters, and still we steamed full speed ahead into this in- 
ferno of fire, presenting a splendid target to the enemy, while 
he himself was very difficult to see. Salvo after salvo fell in 
our immediate vicinity, and shell after shell struck our ship. 
They were the most exciting minutes. I could no longer 
communicate with Lt. von Stosch (who was in the foretop 
control), as the telephone and voice-pipes had been shot away, 
so I had to rely on my own observations to direct the fire. At 
9.13, previous to which all four 12 in. turrets were in action, 
a serious catastrophe occurred. A 15 in. shell penetrated the 
armor of No. 3 turret and exploded inside. The gallant tur- 
ret captain, Lt. von Boltenstern, had both his legs torn off, 
and with him perished practically the entire guns' crew. The 
explosion ignited three cartridges, flames from which reached 
the working chamber, where eight more cartridges were set 
on fire, and passed down to the magazine, igniting still more 
cartridges. They burned fiercely, the flames roaring high 
above the turret — but they burned only, they did not explode — 
as our enemy's cartridges had done — and that saved the ship ! 
Still, the effect of the burning cartridges was catastrophic ; the 
flames killed everything within their reach. Of the 78 men 
of the turret crew only five escaped, some badly wounded, 
by crawling out through the holes for expelling empty car- 
tridge cases. The remaining 73 men died instantly. A few 
seconds after this catastrophe another disaster befell us. A 
15 in. shell pierced the shield of No. 4 turret and burst inside, 
causing frightful destruction. With the exception of one man, 
who was blown out of the turret hatch by the blast of air, 
the entire crew, including all the men in the magazines and 
shell-rooms, 80 souls in all, were instantly killed. All the 
cartridges which had been taken out of their metal cases were 
ignited, so that flames were now shooting sky-high from both 
the after turrets. . . . 

"The enemy's shooting was splendid. Shell after shell 
crashed into us, and my heart stood still as I thought of what 
must be happening inside the ship-. My thoughts were rudely 
disturbed. Suddenly it was to us as if the world had come 
to an end. A terrific roar, a mighty explosion, and then dark- 



406 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

ness fell upon us. We shook under a tremendous blow, which 
lifted the conning-tower bodily off its base, to which it sank 
back vibrating. A heavy shell had struck the gunnery con- 
trol station about 20 inches from me. The shell burst, but 
did not penetrate because it had hit the thick armor at an 
angle, but huge pieces of plating were torn away. . . . We 
found, however, that all the artillery connections were un- 
damaged. Splinters had penetrated the lookout slits of the 
conning-tower, wounding several people inside. The explo- 
sion had forced open the door, which jammed, and two men 
were unable to move it. But help from an unexpected quar- 
ter was at hand. Again we heard a terrific roar and crash, 
and with the noise of a thunderbolt a 15 in. shell exploded 
beneath the bridge. The blast of air swept away everything 
that was not firmly riveted down, and the chart-house disap- 
peared bodily. But the astounding thing was that this same 
air pressure closed the door of the conning-tower! The Eng- 
lishman was polite ; having first opened the door, he carefully 
shut it again for us. I searched with my glass for the enemy, 
but, although the salvos were still falling about us, we could 
see practically nothing of him; all that was really visible were 
the huge, golden-red flames from the muzzles of his guns. . . . 
Without much hope of hurting the enemy I fired salvo after 
salvo from the forward turrets. I could feel how our shoot- 
ing was calming the nerves of the crew. Had we not fired 
at this moment the whole ship's company would have been 
overpowered by a great despair, for every one knew that a few 
minutes more of this would finish us. But so long as we 
fired things could not be so bad with us. The medium guns 
fired also, but only two of the six 5.9's on one side were still 
in action. The fourth gun was split from end to end by a 
burst in the muzzle, and the third was shot to pieces. ..." 

The battle-cruisers were recalled just in time — so it would 
appear — to save them from annihilation, and Com. von Hase 
proceeds : 

"All hands were now busy quelling the fires. Thick clouds 
of yellow gas still poured from both after turrets, but the 
flooding of the magazines soon got rid of this. None of us 
had believed that a ship could stand so many heavy hits. Some 
twenty 15 in. hits were counted after the battle, and about 
the same number of bad hits from smaller calibers. The Lut~ 



THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND 407 

zow was out of sight (she sank later), but the Seydlitz, 
Moltke, and Von der Tann were still with us. They, too, had 
been badly punished, the Seydlitz worst of all. Flames still 
roared from one of her turrets, and all the other ships were 
burning. The bow of the Seydlitz was deep in the water. 
Every battle-cruiser had suffered severe casualties. . . . But 
the death charge had achieved its purpose by covering the 
retreat of the battle fleet. . . . Our ship was very heavily 
battered, and in many places the compartments were mere 
heaps of debris. But vital parts were not hit, and, thanks 
to the strong armor, the engines, boilers, steering gear, and 
nearly all auxiliaries were undamaged. For a long time the 
engine-room was filled with noxious fumes, necessitating the 
use of gas masks. The entire ship was littered with thousands 
of large and small shell splinters, among which we found two 
practically undamaged 1 5 in. shell caps, which were later used 
in the wardroom as wine coolers. The belt armour was 
pierced several times, but either the leaks were stopped or the 
inflow of water was localized in small compartments. In 
Wilhelmshaven we buried our dead, nearly 200 in all." 

By 8 o'clock the German battleships had vanished, with 
the British steering westward by divisions in pursuit. But 
never again did the two battle fleets regain touch with each 
other. Occasional contact with an enemy vessel was made 
by other units of Jellicoe's force. About 8.20 another de- 
stroyer attack was threatened, and again Jellicoe swerved away, 
at the same time, however, sending the Fourth Light Cruiser 
Squadron and two destroyer flotillas, which succeeded in 
breaking up the attempt. At 8.30 he reformed his fleet in 
column and continued on a southwesterly course until 9 o'clock. 

Fourth Phase 

As darkness came on, Jellicoe, declining to risk his ships 
under conditions most favorable to torpedo attack, arranged 
his battleships in four squadrons a mile apart, with destroyer 
flotillas five miles astern, and sent a mine-layer to lay a mine 
field in the neighborhood of the Vyl lightship, covering the 
route over which the Germans were expected to pass if they 



408 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

attempted to get home via the Horn Reef. He then headed 
southeast. Beatty also drew off from pursuit with his battle 
cruisers. Jellicoe's plan was to avoid a general night action, 
but to hold such a position as to compel the Germans to fight 
again the following morning in order to reach their bases. 
During the night (between ten and 2.35) there were several 
sharp conflicts, mainly between the destroyers and light cruis- 
ers of the opposing fleets, with considerable loss on both sides. 
On the British side, two armored cruisers, Black Prince and 
Warrior, went down — both crippled by damages sustained dur- 
ing the day — and five destroyers. Six others were severely 
damaged. On the German side, the battle cruiser Lilts ow sank 
as a result of her injuries, the predreadnought battleship Pom- 
mem was blown up by a torpedo, three light cruisers were sunk, 
and four or five other ships suffered from torpedo or mine. 

The contacts made by British destroyers and cruisers con- 
firm the accounts of the Germans as to the course of their 
fleet during the night. About nine o'clock Scheer changed 
course sharply from west to southeast and cut through the 
rear of the British fleet. At dawn, about 2.40, he was twenty 
miles to eastward of Jellicoe on the road to Wilhelmshaven. 
At noon the greater part of the German fleet was safe in port. 
Some of- the lighter ships, to escape the assaults of the British 
destroyers during the night, headed north and got home by 
way of the Skaggerrack and the Kiel Canal. 

Jellicoe had avoided a night pursuit for the sake of fighting 
on better terms the next morning, but at dawn he found his 
destroyers scattered far and wide. Judging it unwise to pursue 
the High Seas Fleet without a screening force, and discovering 
by directional wireless that it was already south of Horn Reef 
and in the neighborhood of the mine fields, he gave up the 
idea of renewing the engagement and turned north. He spent 
the forenoon in sweeping the scene of the previous day's fight- 
ing, collecting his dispersed units, and then returned to his 
bases. 

The claim of victory, which was promptly and loudly made 
by the German press, is absurd enough. After the Grand 
Fleet arrived there could be only one thought for the Ger- 



THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND 409 

mans and that was a fighting retreat. Nevertheless, they had 
every reason to be proud of what they had done. They had 
met a force superior by a ratio of about 8 to 5 and had escaped 
after inflicting nearly twice as much damage as they had 
sustained. These losses may be compared by means of the 
following table 1 : 

BRITISH, Three Battle Cruisers, QUEEN MARY .... 26,350 tons 

INDEFATIGABLE . 18,800 " 
INVINCIBLE 17,250 " 

Three Armored Cruisers, DEFENSE 14,600 " 

WARRIOR 13,550 " 

BLACK PRINCE. .13,350 " 

Eight Destroyers, TIPPERARY 1,430 " 

NESTOR 890 " 

NOMAD 890 " 

TURBULENT 1,100 " 

FORTUNE 965 " 

ARDENT 935 " 

SHARK 935 " 

SPARROWHAWK.. 935 " 

Total 111,980 tons 

GERMANS, One Battle Cruiser LUETZOW 26,180 tons 

One Pre-dreadnought, POMMERN 13,200 " 

Four Light Cruisers, WIESBADEN 5,400 " 

ELBING 4,500 " 

ROSTOCK 4,900 " 

FRAUENLOB 2,700 " 

Five Destroyers, V-4 570 " 

V-48 750 " 

V-27 640 " 

V-29 640 " 

S-33 7oo " 

Total 60,180 tons 

Personnel, killed and wounded: BRITISH, about 6,600: GERMANS, 
3,076. 

With all allowance for the poor visibility conditions and the 
deepening twilight, it must be admitted also that Scheer han- 

1 Figures in these tables taken from Lieut. Comdr. H. H. Frost, U. S. N., 
U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, Jan., 1920, p. 84. 



410 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

died his ships with great skill. Caught in a noose by an over- 
whelming force, he disentangled himself by means of the 
torpedo attacks of his destroyer flotillas and turned away 
under cover of their smoke screens. After nightfall he boldly 
cut through the rear of the British fleet in battle line, and 
reached his base in safety with the great bulk of his ships. 
Meanwhile at practically all stages of the fighting German gun- 
nery was both rapid and accurate, the seamanship was ad- 
mirable, and there was no lack of courage of the highest order. 

As to material, Admiral Jellicoe notes the superiority of 
the German fleet in range-finding devices, searchlights, smoke 
screens, a star shell — unknown to the British and invaluable 
for night fighting — and in the armor piercing quality of the 
shells. Moreover the Germans were completely equipped with 
systems of director firing, while the British were not. Accord- 
ing to Admiral Sir Percy Scott, 1 "at the Battle of Jutland 
. . . the commander in chief had only six ships of his fleet 
completely fitted with director firing ... he had not a single 
cruiser in the fleet fitted for director firing." 

The greatest superiority of all probably lay in the structural 
features of the newer German ships. For some years prior to 
the war Admiral von Tirpitz had devoted himself to the prob- 
lem of under water protection, to localize the effect of torpedo 
and mine on the hull of a ship. To quote the words of von 
Tirpitz : 2 

"We built a section of a modern ship by itself and carried 
out experimental explosions on it with torpedo heads, care- 
fully testing the result every time. We tested the possibility 
of weakening the force of the explosion by letting the explo- 
sive gases burst in empty compartments without meeting any 
resistance. We ascertained the most suitable steel for the 
different structural parts, and found further that the effect of 
the explosion was nullified if we compelled it to pulverize coal 
in any considerable quantity. This resulted in a special ar- 
rangement of the coal bunkers. We were then able to meet 
the force of the explosion ... by a strong, carefully con- 

1 Fifty Years in the Royal Navy, p. 278. 
3 My Memoirs, Vol. I, p. 171. 



THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND 411 

stnicted steel wall which finally secured the safety of the in- 
terior of the ship." 

The only German armored ship that succumbed to the blow 
of a single torpedo was the Pommern, an old vessel, built be- 
fore the fruits of these experiments were embodied in the 
German fleet. The labor of von Tirpitz was well justified by 
the results, as may be seen by the instantaneous fashion with 
which the three British battle cruisers went to the bottom, 
compared with the ability of the German battle cruisers to 
stand terrific pounding and yet stay afloat and keep going. 
According to the testimony of a German officer, 1 the Liitzow 
was literally shot to pieces in the battle and even then it took 
three torpedoes to settle her. Actually she was sunk by open- 
ing her seacocks to prevent her possible capture. "The re- 
markable ability of the battle cruiser Gob en, in Turkish wa- 
ters, to survive shell, mines, and torpedo, bears the same 
testimony, as does the Mains, which, in the action of the 
Heligoland Bight had to be sunk by one of her own officers, 
as in the case of the Liitzozv. It is possible that Jellicoe as- 
sumed an inferiority of the British armor piercing shell because 
of this power of the German ships to stay afloat. But photo- 
graphs published after the armistice showed that British shells 
penetrated the n-inch turret armor of the Seydlits and the 13- 
inch of the Derfftinger with frightful effect. The difference 
was in the fact that they did not succeed in sinking those 
ships, which, after all is the chief object of a shell, and this 
must be attributed to better under-water construction. 

The only criticism that seems possible to suggest on Scheer's 
tactics is the unwariness of his pursuit, which might so easily 
have led to the total destruction of the German fleet. Strangely 
enough, although a Zeppelin hovered over the British fleet at 
dawn of the day after the battle, no aircraft of any kind 
scouted ahead of the Germans the day before. In pursuing 
Beatty, Scheer had to take a chance, well aware that if the 
Grand Fleet were within reach, Beatty's wireless would bring 
it upon him. But Scheer was evidently perfectly willing to 

1 Quoted in Naval and Military Record, Dec. 24, 1919, p. 822. 



412 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

risk the encounter. Such criticism as arose in Germany — 
from Captain Persius, for example — centered on "Tirpitz's 
faulty constructional methods" ; which, in the light of the 
facts of the battle would seem to be the very last thing to 
hit upon. 

As for types and weapons it is clear that the armored cruisers 
served only as good targets and death traps. The British 
would have been better off if every armored cruiser had been 
left at home. The dominating feature of the story is the 
influence of the torpedo on Jellicoe's tactics. It is fair to 
say that it was the Parthian tactics of the German destroyer, 
both actual and potential, that saved the High Seas Fleet and 
robbed the British of a greater Trafalgar. At every crisis 
in the battle it was either what the German destroyer did or 
might do that governed the British commander's maneuvers. 
At the time of deployment he formed on the farthest rather 
than on the nearest division because of what German destroyers 
might do. When the Grand Fleet swung away to the east 
and lost all contact with their enemy for the rest of the battle, 
it was because of a destroyer attack. At this time eleven de- 
stroyers accomplished the feat of driving 2.J dreadnoughts 
from the field ! Again, the pursuit was called off at nightfall 
because of the peril of destroyer attacks under cover of dark- 
ness, and finally Jellicoe decided not to risk an action the fol- 
lowing morning because his capital ships had no screening 
forces against the torpedo of the enemy. It is worth noting 
in this connection that although the Admiralty were aware of 
the battle in progress, they held back the Harwich force of 
destroyers and light cruisers which would have proved a wel- 
come reenforcement in pursuing the retreating fleet. The rea- 
son for this decision has never been published. 

In connection with the important part played by the German 
destroyers at Jutland it is worth remarking that before the 
war it was the Admiralty doctrine that destroyers could not 
operate successfully by day, and they were accordingly painted 
black for night service. The German destroyers were painted 
gray. After Jutland the British flotillas also were painted the 
battleship gray. 



THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND 413 

Naturally the failure of the superior fleet to crush the in- 
ferior one aroused a storm of criticism, the most severe 
emanating from English naval writers. The sum and sub- 
stance is the charge of overcaution on the part of the British 
Commander in Chief. It is held that Jellicoe should have 
formed his battle line on his starboard instead of his port 
wing, thus turning toward the enemy and concentrating on the 
head of their column at once. Forming on the port division 
caused the battle fleet to swerve away from the enemy and 
open the range just at the critical moment of contact, leaving 
Beatty unsupported in his dash across the head of the enemy's 
line. It is said that the latter even sent a signal to the Marlbor- 
ough for the battleships to fall in astern of him, and the 
failure to do so made his maneuver fruitless. Apparently this 
message was not transmitted to the flagship at the time. In 
answer Jellicoe explains in great detail that the preliminary 
reports received from Goodenough and others as to the posi- 
tion of the High Seas Fleet were so meager and conflicting 
that he could not form line of battle earlier than he did, and 
secondly that deploying on the starboard division at the mo- 
ment of sighting the enemy would have thrown the entire 
battle fleet into confusion, blanketed their fire, and created a 
dangerous opening for torpedo attack from the destroyers at 
the head of the German column. On this point Scheer agrees 
with the critics. Deploying on the starboard division instead 
of the port, he says, "would have greatly impeded our move- 
ments and rendered a fresh attack on the enemy's line ex- 
tremely difficult." 

The second point of criticism rested on the turning away of 
the battleships at the critical point of the torpedo attack at 
7.20, under cover of which the German battleships wheeled 
to westward and disappeared. Jellicoe's reply is that if he 
had swung to starboard, turning toward the enemy, he would 
have headed into streams of approaching torpedoes under 
conditions of mist and smoke that were ideal for torpedo 
attack, and if he had maintained position in line ahead he 
would have courted heavy losses. In connection with this 
turn he calls attention to the fact that British light cruisers 



414 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

and destroyers could not be used to deliver a counter attack 
because, on account of the rapid changes of course and forma- 
tion made by the battlefleet, they had been unable to reach 
their proper station in the van. 

Thirdly, if conditions for night battle were too risky why 
dM the Grand Fleet fail to keep sufficient touch with the 
enemy by means of its light flotillas so as to be informed of 
his movements and prevent his escape? There were frequent 
contacts during that short night, and the Germans were sighted 
steering southeast. The attacks made by British destroyers 
certainly threw the German line into confusion, and some of 
the light vessels were driven to the north, reaching German 
bases by way of the Baltic. Nevertheless the fleet succeeded 
in cutting through without serious loss. To this there seems 
to be no answer. 

Lastly, to the query why Jellicoe did not seek another action 
in the morning, as originally intended, he replies that he dis- 
covered by directional wireless that the Germans were already 
safe between the mine fields and the coast, and that he could 
not safely proceed without his screening force of destroyers 
and light cruisers, which, after their night operations, were 
widely scattered. From German accounts, however, we find 
no mention of a shelter behind mine fields, but astonish- 
ment at the fact that they were permitted to go on their way 
unmolested. Morning found the two fleets only twenty miles 
apart, and the Germans had a half day's steaming before they 
could reach port. They were in no condition to fight. The 
battleship Osijriesland had struck a mine and had to be towed. 
The battle cruiser Seydlitz had to be beached to keep her from 
sinking, and other units were limping along with their gun 
decks almost awash. 

Certainly the tactics of Jellicoe do not suggest those of 
Blake, Hawke, or Nelson. They do not fit Farragut's motto 
— borrowed from Danton 1 — "l'audace, encore 1'audace, et 
toujours l'audace," or Napoleon's "frappez vite, frappez fort." 
War, as has been observed before, cannot be waged without 
taking risks. The British had a heavy margin to gamble on. 
x And borrowed by Danton from Cicero. 



THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND 415 

As it happened, 23 out of the entire 28 battleships came out 
of the fight without so much as a scratch on their paint; and, 
after deployment, only one out of the battle line of 27 dread- 
noughts received a single hit. This was the Colossus, which 
had four men wounded by a shell. 

The touchstone of naval excellence is Nelson. As Mahan 
has so ably pointed out, while weapons change principles re- 
main. Dewey, in deciding to take the chances involved in a 
night entry of Manila Bay did so in answer to his own ques- 
tion, "What would Farragut do?" Hence in considering Jut- 
land one may take a broader view than merely a criticism of 
tactics. In a word, does the whole conduct of the affair reveal 
the method and spirit of Nelson? 

At Trafalgar there was no need for a deployment after 
the enemy was sighted because in the words of the famous 
Memorandum, "the order of sailing is to be the order of 
battle." The tactics to be followed when the French appeared 
had been carefully explained by Nelson to his commanders. 
No signal was needed — except the fine touch of inspiration in 
"England expects every man to do his duty." In brief, the 
British fleet had been so thoroughly indoctrinated, and the 
plan was so simple, that there was no room for hesitation, un- 
certainty, or dependence on the flagship for orders at the last 
minute. It is hard to see evidence of any such indoctrination 
of the Grand Fleet before Jutland. 

Again, Nelson was, by example and precept, constantly in- 
sisting on the initiative of the subordinate. "The Second in 
Command will . . . have the entire direction of his line to 
make the attack upon the enemy, and to follow up the blow 
until they are captured or destroyed. . . . Captains are to 
look to their particular line as their rallying point. But in case 
signals can neither be seen nor perfectly understood, no cap- 
tain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of an 
enemy." At Jutland, despite the urgent signals of Beatty at 
two critical moments, neither Burney of the sixth division nor 
Jerram of the first felt free to act independently of the orders 
of the Commander in Chief. The latter tried, as Nelson em- 



416 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

phatically did not, to control from the flagship every movement 
of the entire fleet. 

Further, if naval history has taught anything it has estab- 
lished a point so closely related to the responsibility and initia- 
tive of the subordinate as to be almost a part of it; namely, a 
great fleet that fights in a single rigid line ahead never achieves 
a decisive victory. Blake, Tromp, and de Ruyter fought with 
squadrons, expecting — indeed demanding — initiative on the 
part of their flag officers. That was the period when great 
and decisive victories were won. The close of the 17th 
century produced the "Fighting Instructions," requiring the 
unbroken line ahead, and there followed a hundred years of 
indecisive battles and bungled opportunities. Then Nelson 
came and revived the untrammeled tactics of the days of 
Blake with the added glory of his own genius. It appears 
that at Jutland the battleships were held to a rigid unit of 
fleet formation as in the days of the Duke of York or Ad- 
miral Graves. And concentration with a long line of dread- 
noughts is no more possible to-day than it was with a similar 
line of two-decked sailing ships a century and a half ago. 

Finally, in the matter of spirit, the considerations that 
swayed the movements of the Grand Fleet at all stages were 
apparently those of what the enemy might do instead of what 
might be done to the enemy, the very antithesis of the spirit 
of Nelson. It is no reflection on the personal courage of the 
Commander in Chief that he should be moved by the con- 
sideration of saving his ships. The existence of the Grand 
Fleet was, of course, essential to the Allied cause, and there 
was a heavy weight of responsibility hanging on its use. But 
again it is a matter of naval doctrine. Did the British fleet 
exist merely to maintain a numerical preponderance over its 
enemy or to crush that enemy — whatever the cost? If the 
battle of Jutland receives the stamp of approval as the best 
that could have been done, then the British or the American 
officer of the future will know that he is expected primarily 
to "play safe." But he will never tread the path of Blake, 
Hawke, or Nelson, the men who made the traditions of the 
Service and forged the anchors of the British Empire. 



THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND 417 

Thus the great battle turned out to be indecisive ; in fact, it 
elated the Germans with a feeling of success and depressed 
the British with a keen sense of failure. Nevertheless, the 
control of the sea remained in the hands of the English, and 
never again did the High Seas Fleet risk another encounter. 
The relative positions at sea of the two adversaries therefore 
remained unaltered. 

On the other hand, if the British had destroyed the German 
fleet the victory would have been priceless. As Jervis re- 
marked at Cape St. Vincent, "A victory is very essential to 
England at this hour." The spring of 191 6 was an ebb point in 
Allied prospects. The Verdun offensive was not halted, the 
Somme drive had not yet begun, the Russians were beaten far 
back in their own territory, the Italians had retreated, and 
there was rebellion in Ireland. The annihilation of the High 
Seas Fleet would have reversed the situation with dramatic 
suddenness and would have at least marked the turning point 
of the war. Without a German battle fleet, the British could 
have forced the fighting almost to the very harbors of the 
German coast — bottling up every exit by a barrage of mines. 
The blockade, therefore, could have been drawn close to the 
coast defenses. Moreover, with the High Seas Fleet gone, the 
British fleet could have entered and taken possession of the 
Baltic, which throughout the war remained a German lake. 
By this move England would have threatened the German Bal- 
tic coast with invasion and extended her blockade in a highly 
important locality, cutting off the trade between Sweden and 
Germany. She would also have come to the relief of Russia, 
which was suffering terrible losses from the lack of munitions. 
Indeed it would have saved that ally from the collapse that 
withdrew her from the war. With no German "fleet in being" 
great numbers of workers in English industry and vast quan- 
tities of supplies might have been transferred to the support 
of the army. The threat of invasion would have been re- 
moved, and the large army that was kept in England right 
up to the crisis of March, 1918, 1 would have been free to re- 
enforce the army at the front. Finally, without the personnel 

'A quarter of a million men were sent from England at this time. 



418 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

of the German fleet there could have been no ruthless sub- 
marine campaign the year after, such as actpally came so near 
to winning the war. Thus, while the German claim to a tri- 
umph that drove the British from the seas is ridiculous, it is 
equally so to argue, as the First Lord of the Admiralty did, 
that there was no need of a British victory at Jutland, that all 
the fruits of victory were gained as it was. The subsequent 
history of the war tells a different tale. 

REFERENCES 

The Grand Fleet, 1914-1916, Admiral Viscount Lord Jellicoe of 

Scapa, 1919. 
The German High Seas Fleet in the World War, Vice Admiral 

von Scheer, 1920. 
The Battle of Jutland, Commander Carlyon Bellairs, M. P., 1920. 
The Naval Annual, 1919, Earl Brassey. 
A Description of the Battle of Jutland, Lieut. Commander H. 

H. Frost, U. S. N., in U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, vol. 

45, pp. 1829 ff, 2019 ff ; vol. 46, pp. 61 ff. 
The British Navy in Battle, A. H. Pollen, 1919. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE WORLD WAR [Continued'] : COMMERCE 
WARFARE 

Interdiction of enemy trade has always been the great 
weapon of sea power; and hence, though mines, submarines, 
and the menace of the High Seas Fleet itself made a close 
blockade of the German coast impossible, Great Britain in the 
World War steadily extended her efforts to cut off Germany's 
intercourse with the overseas world. Germany, on the other 
hand, while unwilling or unable to take the risks of a contest 
for surface control of the sea, waged cruiser warfare on Brit- 
ish and Allied commerce, first by surface vessels, and, when 
these were destroyed, by submarines. In the policies adopted 
by each belligerent there is an evident analogy to the British 
blockade and the French commerce destroying campaigns of 
the Napoleonic Wars. And just as in the earlier conflict Brit- 
ish sea power impelled Napoleon to a ruinous struggle for the 
domination of Europe, so in the World War, though in a 
somewhat different fashion, the blockade worked disaster for 
Germany. 

"The consequences of the blockade," writes the German 
General von Freytag-Loringhoven, "showed themselves at 
once. Although we succeeded in establishing our war eco- 
nomics by our internal strength, yet the unfavorable state of 
the world economic situation was felt by us throughout the 
war. That alone explains why our enemies found ever fresh 
possibilities of resistance, because the sea stood open to them, 
and why victories which would otherwise have been absolutely 
decisive, and the conquest of whole kingdoms, did not bring 
us nearer peace." 

419 



420 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

For each group of belligerents, indeed, the enemy's com- 
merce warfare assumed a vital significance. "No German suc- 
cess on land," declares the conservative British Annual Reg- 
ister for 19 1 9, "could have ruined or even very gravely injured 
the English-speaking powers. The success of the submarine 
campaign, on the other hand, would have left the United States 
isolated and have placed the Berlin Government in a position 
to dominate most of the rest of the world." "The war is won 
for us," declared General von Hindenburg on July 2, 19 17, 
"if we can withstand the enemy attacks until the submarine 
has done its work." 

Commerce warfare at once involves a third party, the neu- 
tral; and it therefore appears desirable, before tracing the 
progress of this warfare, to outline briefly the principles of 
international law which, by a slow and tortuous process, have 
grown up defining the respective rights of neutrals and bel- 
ligerents in naval war. Blockade is among the most funda- 
mental of these rights accorded to the belligerent, upon the 
conditioiia, that the blockade shall be limited to enemy ports or 
coasts, confined within 'specified limits, and made so effective 
as to create evident danger to traffic. It assumes control of 
the sea by the blockading navy, and, before the days of mines 
and submarines, it was enforced by a cordon of ships off the 
enemy coast. A blockade stops direct trade or intercourse of 
any kind. 

WbeillS£^Q£*npt a blockade is established, a belligerent has 
the right to attempt the prevention of trade in contraband. A 
neutral nation is under no obligation whatever to restrain its 
citizens from engaging in this trade. In preventing it, how- 
ever, a belligerent warship may stop, visit, and search any 
merchant vessel on the high seas. If examination of the ship's 
papers and search show fraud, contraband cargo, offense in 
respect to blockade, enemy ownership or service, the vessel 
may be taken as a prize, subject to adjudication in the bel- 
ligerent's prize courts. The right of merchant vessels to carry 
defensive armament is well established ; but resistance justifies 
destruction. Under certain circumstances prizes may be de- 



COMMERCE WARFARE 421 

stroyed at sea, after removal of the ship's papers and full 
provision for the safety of passengers and crew. 

The Declaration of London, 1 drawn up in 1909, was an 
attempt to restate and secure general acceptance of these prin- 
ciples, with notable modifications. Lists were drawn up of 
absolute contraband (munitions, etc., adapted obviously if not 
exclusively for use in war), conditional contraband (including 
foodstuffs, clothing, rolling stock, etc., susceptible of use in 
war but having non-warlike uses as well), and free goods (in- 
cluding raw cottonjind_wool, hides, and ores). The most sig- 
nificant provTsion of the Declaration wasTtnat the doctrine of 
continuous voyage should apply only to absolute contraband. 
This doctrine, established 'by ""Great Britain in the French wars 
and expanded by the United States in the American Civil War, 
holds that the ultimate enemy destination of a cargo deter- 
mines its character, regardless of transshipment in a neutral 
port and subsequent carnage"Ey sea or land. The Declara- 
tion of London was never ratified by Great Britain, and was 
observed for only a brief period in the first months of the war. 
Had it been ratified and observed, Germany would have been 
free to import all necessary supplies, other than munitions, 
through neutral states on her frontiers. 

The ^Blockade of Germany 

Unable to establish a close blockade, and not venturing at 
once to advance the idea of a "long range" blockade, England 
was nevertheless able to impose severe restrictions upon Ger- 
many by extending the lists of contraband, applying the doc- 
trine of continuous voyage to both absolute and conditional 
contraband, and throwing upon the owners of cargoes the 
burden of proof as to destination. Cotton still for a time en- 
tered Germany, and some exports were permitted. But on 
March 1, 1915, in retaliation for Germany's declaration of a 
"war area^ around the British Isles, Great Britain asserted 
her purpose to establish what amounted to a complete embargo 

1 Printed in full in International Law Topics of the U. S. Naval War 
College, 1 910, p. 169 ff. 



422 r Ai HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

on German trade, holding herself free, in the words of Pre- 
mier Asquith, "to detain and take into port ships carrying 
goods of presumed enemy destination, ownership, or origin." 
In a note of protest on March 30, the United States virtually 
recognized the legitimacy of a long-range blockade — an inno- 
vation of seemingly wide possibilities — and confined its objec- 
tions to British interference with lawful trade between neu- 
trals, amounting in effect to a blockade of neutral ports. 

As a matter of fact, in spite of British efforts, there had 
been an immense increase of indirect trade with Germany 
through neutrals. While American exports to Germany in 
1915 were $154,000,000 less than in 1913, and in fact prac- 
tically ceased altogether, American exports to Holland and the 
Scandinavian states increased by $158,000,000. This trade 
continued up to the time when the United States entered the 
war, after which all the restrictions which England had em- 
ployed were given a sharper application. By a simple process 
of substitution, European neutrals had been able to import 
commodities for home use, and export their own products to 
Germany. Now, in order to secure supplies at all, they were 
forced to sign agreements which put them on rations and gave 
the Western Powers complete control of their exports to Ger- 
many. 

The effect of the Allied blockade upon Germany is sug- 
gested by the accompanying chart. In the later stages of the 
war it created a dearth of important raw materials, crippled 
war industries, brought the country to the verge of starvation, 
and caused a marked lowering of national efficiency and 
morale. 

Germany protested vigorously to the United States for 
allowing her foodstuffs to be shut out of Germany while at 
the same time shipping to England vast quantities of muni- 
tions. Throughout the controversy, however, Great Britain 
profited by the fact that while her methods caused only finan- 
cial injury to neutrals, those employed by Germany destroyed 
or imperiled human lives. 



COMMERCE WARFARE 



423 



The Submarine Campaign 

The German submarine campaign may be dated from Feb- 
ruary 18, 191 5, when Germany, citing as a precedent Great 
Britain's establishment of a military area in the North Sea, 
proclaimed a war zone "in the waters around Great Britain 
and Ireland, including the whole English Channel," within 



§!§§ 




RUBBER COTTON FOODSTUFFS 



FEEDING 

SX U F= FS 



From The Blockade of Germany, Alonzo E. Taylor, World's Work, Oct. 19 19. 

EFFECTS OF THE BLOCKADE OF GERMANY 
Decreased supply of commodities in successive years of the war. 



which jmemy merchant vessels would be junjc^^wjthout as- 
suiaiu»^OaES3Utt.4iag§engers or crew. Furthermore, as a 
means of keeping neutrals out of British waters, Germany 
declared she would assume no responsibility for destruction 
of neutral ships within this zone. What this meant was to 
all intents and purposes a "paper" submarine blockade of 
the British Isles. Its illegitimacy arose from the fact that 
it was conducted surreptitiously ny^r a yp gf si-ps an d was 
only in the slightest "' Segree" effective, causing" a destruction 



424 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

each month of less than one percent of the traffic. Had it 
been restricted to narrow limits, it would have been still less 
effective, owing to the facility of countermeasures in a small 
area. 

Determined, however, upon a spectacular demonstration of 
its possibilities, Germany first published danger notices in 
American newspapers, and then, on May 7, 191 5, sank the 
unarmed Cunard liner Ludtania off the Irish coast, with a loss 
of 1 198 lives, including 102 Americans. In spite of divided 
American sentiment and a strong desire for peace, this act 
came little short of bringing the United States into the war. 
Having already declared its intention to hold Germany to 
"strict accountability," the United States Government now 
stated that a second offense would be regarded as "deliberately 
unfriendly," and after a lengthy interchange of notes secured 
the pledge that "liners will, not be sunk without warning and 
without safety of the lives of non-combatants, provided that 
the liners do not try to escape or offer resistance." Violations 
of this pledge, further controversies, and increased friction 
with neutrals marked the next year or more, during which, 
however, sinkings did not greatly exceed the level of about 
150,000 tons a month already attained. 

During this period Allied countermeasures were chiefly of a 
defensive character, including patrol of coastal areas, diver- 
sion of traffic from customary routes, and arming of mer- 
chantmen. This last measure, making surface approach and 
preliminary warning a highly dangerous procedure for the 
submarine, led Germany to the announcement that, after 
Marchi 1 Jgi6 > aljar^edniejrchant vessels would be torpedoed 
without warning. But how were U-boat commanders to 
distinguish between enemy and neutral vessels? Between 
vessels with or without guns? The difficulty brings out 
clearly the fact that while the submarines made good pirates, 
they were hampered in warfare on legitimate lines. 

Germany redoubled U-boat activities to lend strength to 
her peace proposals at the close of 1916, and when these failed 
she decided to disregard altogether the cobwebs of legalism 
that had hitherto hindered her submarine war. On February 



COMMERCE WARFARE 



425 




GERMAN BARRED ZONES 
British mined area and North Sea mine barrage. 

I, 1917, she declared unrestricted warfare in an immense 
barred zone within limits extending from the Dutch coast 
through the middle of the North Sea to the Faroe Islands and 
thence west and south to Cape Finisterre, and including also 
the entire Mediterranean east of Spain. An American ship 
was to be allowed to enter and leave Falmouth once a week, 
and there was a crooked lane leading to Greece. 

In thus announcing her intention to sink all ships on sight 
in European waters, Germany burned her bridges behind her. 
She staked everything on this move. Fully anticipating the 



426 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

hostility of the United States, she hoped to win the war before 
that country could complete its preparations and give effective 
support to the Allies. General von Hindenburg's statement 
has already been quoted. It meant that the army was to as- 
sume the defensive, while the navy carried out its attack on 
Allied communications. Admiral von Capelle, head of the 
German Admiralty, declared that America's aid would be 
"absolutely negligible." "My personal view," he added, "is 
that the U-boat will bring peace within six months." 

As it turned out, Germany's disregard of neutral rights 
in 191 7, like the violation of Belgium in 1914, reacted upon 
her and proved the salvation of the Western Powers. After 
the defection of Russia, France was in imperative need of 
men. Great Britain needed ships. Neither of these needs 
could have been supplied save by America's throwing her 
utmost energies into active participation in the war. This 
was precisely the result of the proclamation of Feb. I, 19 17. 
The United States at once broke off diplomatic relations, 
armed her merchant vessels in March, and on April 6 de- 
clared a state of war. 

Having traced the development of submarine warfare to 
this critical period, we may now turn to the methods and 
weapons employed by both sides at a time when victory or 
defeat hinged on the outcome of the war at sea. 

Germany's submarine construction and losses appear in the 
following table from official German sources, the columns 
showing first the total number built up to the date given, next 
the total losses to date, and finally the remainder with which 
Germany started out at the beginning of each year. 

After 1916 Germany devoted the facilities of her shipyards 
entirely to submarine construction, and demoralized the sur- 
face fleet to secure personnel. Of the entire number built, not 
ttrore-tiiah. a score were over 850 tons. The U C boats were 
small mine-layers about 160 feet in length, with not more 
than two weeks' cruising period. The U B's were of various 
sizes, mostly small, and some of them were built in sections 
for transportation by rail. The U boats proper, which con- 
stituted the largest and most important class, had a speed of 



COMMERCE WARFARE 



427 





Boats built 


Losses 


(On Jan 


Remainder 
1 of year following) 


End of 1914 


3i 


5 




26 


19*5 


93 


25 




68 




188 


5o 




138 


I9I7 


291 


122 




169 


1918 


372 


202 




170 



about 16 knots on the surface and 9 knots submerged, and 
could remain at sea for a period of 5 or 6 weeks, the duration 
of the cruise depending chiefly upon the supply of torpedoes. 
In addition there were a half dozen large submarine mer- 
chantmen of the type of the Deutschland, which made two voy- 
ages to America in 1916; and a similar number of big cruisers 
of 2000 tons or more were completed in 1918, mounting two 
6-inch guns and capable of remaining at sea for several 
months. The 372 boats built totaled 209,000 tons and had 
a personnel of over 11,000 officers and men. There were 
seldom more than 20 or 30 submarines in active operation at 
one time. One third of the total number were always in port, 
and the remainder in training. 

It is evident from her limited supply of submarines at the 
outbreak of war that Germany did not contemplate their use 
as commerce destroyers. To the Allied navies also, in spite 
of warnings from a few more far-sighted officers, their use 
for this purpose carae as a. complete surprise. New methods 
had to be devised, new weapons invented, new types of ship 
built and old ones put to uses for which they were not in- 
tended — in short, a whole new system of warfare inaugurated 
amidst the preoccupations of war. As usual in such circum- 
stances, the navy taking the aggressive with a new weapon 
gained a temporary ascendancy, until effective counter-measures 
could be contrived. It is easy to say that all this should have 
been foreseen and provided for, but it is a question to what 



U 71-80 OCEAN-GOING MINE-LAYERS 
IT B 48-149 
U C 80 CLASS OF MINE-LAYERS 




OCEAN-GOING TYPES U 30 TO U 39 




OCEAN-GOING TYPES FROM ABOUT U 51 TO U 70 




OCEAN-GOING TYPES FROM U 19 TO U 28 




OCEAN-GOING TYPES FROM' ABOUT U 30 Up TO U 39 




u 151-157 (ocean-going) 

OCEAN-GOING TYPES OF GERMAN SUBMARINES 
428 



COMMERCE WARFARE 429 

extent preparations could profitably have been made before 
Germany began her campaign. It has already been pointed out 
in the chapter preceding that, had the German fleet been de- 
stroyed at Jutland, subsequent operations on the German coast 
might have made the submarine campaign impossible, and 
preparations unnecesary. 

Anti-Submarine Tactics 

Of the general categories of anti-submarine tactics, — de- 
tection, evasion, and destruction — it was naturally those of 
evasion that were first employed. Among these may be in- ^ 
eluded ^i^^^o^^oj^sjiilin^^upfilQ warning of a submarine t., 
in the vicinity, diversion of traffic from customary routes, 
camouflage, and zigzag"Tourses to prevent the enemy from 
securing favorable position and aim. The first method was 
effective only at the expense of a severe reduction of traffic, 
amounting in the critical months of 19 17 to 40 per cent of a 
total stoppage. The second sometimes actually aided the 
submarine, for in confined areas such as the Mediterranean it 
was likely to discover the new route and reap a rich harvest. 
Camouflage was discarded as of slight value; but shifts of 
course were employed to advantage by both merchant and 
naval vessels throughout the war. 

Methods of detection depended on both sight and sound. +- 
Efficient lookout systems on shipboard, with men assigned to*^ 
different sectors so as to cover the entire horizon, made it pos- 
sible frequently to detect a periscope or torpedo wake in time 
to change course, bring guns to bear, and escape destruction. 
According to a British Admiralty estimate, in case a subma- 
rine were sighted the chances of escape were seven to three, 
but otherwise only one to four. Aircraft of all kinds proved 
of great value in detecting the presence of U-boats, as well as 
in attacking them. Hydrophones and other listening devices, 
though at first more highly perfected by the enemy, were 
so developed during the war as to enable patrol vessels to 
discover the presence and even determine the course and speed 
of a submerged foe. Along with these devices, a system of 




430 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

information^was organized which, drawing infomiation from 
a wide variety of sources, enabled Allied authorities to trace 
the cruise of a U-boat, anticipate its arival in a given locality, 
and prophesy the duration of its stay. 

Among methods of destruction, the mounting of guns on 
(nierchantmen was chiefly valuable, as already suggested, be- 
* cause of its effect in forcing submarines to resort to illegal and 
barbarous methods of warfare. Hitherto, submarines had been 
accustomed to operate on the surface, board vessels, and sink 
them by bombs or gunfire. Visit and search, essential in order 
to avoid injury to neutrals, was now out of the question, for 
owing to the surface vulnerability of the submarine it might 
be sent to the bottom by a single well-directed shot. In brief, 
the guns on the merchant ship kept submarines beneath the 
surface, forced them to draw upon their limited and costly 
supply of torpedoes, and hindered them from securing good 
position and aim for torpedo attack. 

Much depended, of course, upon the range of the ship's 
guns and the size and experience of the gun-crews. When the 
United States began arming her ships in March, 191 7, she was 
able to put enough trained men aboard to maintain lookouts 
and man guns both night and day. A dozen or more exciting 
duels ensued between ships and U-boats before the latter 
learned that such encounters did not repay the risks involved. 
On October 19, 191 7, the steamer/. L. Luckenbach had a four- 
hour running battle with a submarine in which the ship fired 
202 rounds and the pursuer 225. The latter scored nine hits, 
but was at last driven off by the appearance of a destroyer. 
To cite another typical engagement, the Navajo, in the English 
Channel, July 4, 1917, was attacked first by torpedo and then 
by gunfire. The 27th shot from the ship hit the enemy's con- 
ning tower and caused two' explosions. "Men who were on 
deck at the guns and had not jumped overboard ran aft. The 
submarine canted forward at an angle of almost 40 degrees, 
and the propeller could be plainly seen lashing the air." 1 

1 For more detailed narratives of this and other episodes of the subma- 
rine campaign, see Ralph D. Payne, The Fighting Fleets, 1918. 



COMMERCE WARFARE 431 

In, coastal waters where traffic converged, large forces of 
destroyers and other craft were employed for purposes of 
escort, mine sweeping, patrol. Yet, save as a means of keep- 
ing the enemy under water and guarding merchant ships, these 
units had only a limited value owing to the difficulty of mak- 
ing contact with the enemy. During the later stages of the 
war destroyers depended chiefly upon the depth bomb, an in- 
vention of the British navy, which by means of the so-called 
"Y guns" could be dropped in large numbers around the sup- 
posed location of the enemy. It was in this way that the 
United States Destroyers Fanning and Nicholson, while en- 
gaged as convoy escorts, sank the U-58 and captured its crew. 

The "mystery" or "Q" ships (well-armed vessels disguised 
as harmless merchantmen) were of slight efficacy after sub- 
marines gave up surface attack. In fact, it was the subma- 
rine itself which, contrary to all pre-war theories, proved the 
most effective type of naval craft against its own kind. Where- 
as fuel economy compelled German submarines to spend as 
much time as possible on the surface, the Allied under-water 
boats, operating near their bases, could cruise awash or sub- 
merged and were thus able to creep up on the enemy and attack 
unawares. According to Admiral Sims, Allied a^troyers, 
about 500 in all, were credited with the certain destruction of 
34 enemy submarines; yachts, ^ajtrolcraft, etc., over 3000 al- 
togemer, sajnkjy: ; whereas aboutTocTTUlied submarines sank 
probably 20. 1 Since 202 submarines were destroyed, this may 
be an underestimate of the results accomplished by each type, 
but it indicates relative efficiency. Submarines kept the enemy 
beneath the surface, led him to stay farther away from the 
coast, and also, owing tx> the disastrous consequences that 
might ensue from mistaken identity, prevented the U-boats 
from operating in pairs. The chief danger encountered by 
Allied submarines was from friendly surface vessels. On one 
occasion an American submarine, the AL-10, approaching a 
destroyer of the same service, was forced to dive and was then 
given a bombardment of depth charges. This bent plates, 
extinguished lights, and brought the submarine again to the 
1 The Victory at Sea, World's Works, May, 1920, p. 56. 



432 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

surface, where fortunately she was identified in the nick of 
time. The two commanders had been roommates at Annapolis. 



Work of the United States Navy 

Having borne the brunt of the naval war for three years, 
the British navy welcomed the reinforcements which the United 
States was able to contribute, and shared to the utmost the 
experience already gained. On May 3, 19 17, the first squad- 
ron of 6 American destroyers arrived at Queenstown, and 
were increased to 50 operating in European waters in Novem- 
ber, and 70 at the time of the armistice. A flotilla of yachts, 
ill adapted as they were for such service, did hazardous duty 
as escorts in the Bay of Biscay; and a score of submarines 
crossed the Atlantic during the winter to operate off Ireland 
and in the Azores. Five dreadnoughts under Admiral Rod- 
man from the U. S. Atlantic fleet became a part of the Grand 
Fleet at Scapa Flow. 

Probably the most notable work of the American navy was 
in projects where American manufacturing resources and ex- 
perience in large-scale undertakings could be brought to bear. 
In four months, from July to November, 19 17, the United 
States Navy constructed an oil pipe line from the west to the 
east coast of Scotland, thus eliminating the long and danger- 
ous northern circuit. Five 14-inch naval guns, on railway 
mountings, with a complete train of 16 cars for each gun, 
were equipped by the navy, manned entirely with naval per- 
sonnel, and were in action in France from August, 19 18, until 
the armistice, firing a total of 782 rounds on the German lines 
of communication, at ranges up to 30 miles. 

The American proposal of a mine barrage across the en- 
trance to the North Sea from Scotland to Norway at first 
met with slight approval abroad, so unprecedented was the 
problem of laying a mine-field 230 miles in length, from 15 
to 30 miles in width, and extending at least 240 feet downward 
in waters the total depth of which was 400 or more feet. Even 
the mine barrier at the Straits of Dover had proved in- 
effective owing to heavy tides, currents, and bad bottom con- 



COMMERCE WARFARE 



433 



ditions, until it was strengthened by Admiral Keyes in 1918. 
By employing a large type of mine perfected by the United 
States Naval Bureau of Ordnance, it was found possible, 
however, to reduce by one-third the number of mines and the 
amount of wire needed for the North Sea Barrage. The task 
was therefore undertaken, and completed in the summer ol 
19 1 8. Out of a total of 70,000 mines, 56,570, or about 80 
per cent, were planted by American vessels. The barrage when 
completed gave an enemy submarine about one chance in ten 
of getting through. According to reliable records, it accom- 
plished the destruction or serious injury of 17 German sub- 




N O R. T H 



OSTEND-ZEEBRUGGE AREA 



marines, and by its deterrent effect, must have practically 
closed the northern exit to both under- water and surface craft. 



The Attack on Zeebrugge and Ostend 

At the Channel exit of the North Sea, a vigorous blow at 
the German submarine nests on the Belgian coast was finally 
struck on April 22-23, I 9 I 8, by the Dover Force under Vice 
Admiral Roger Keyes, in one of the most brilliant naval 
operations of the war. Of the two Belgian ports, Ostend and 
Zeebrugge, the latter was much more useful to the Germans 
because better protected, less exposed to batteries on the land 
front, and connected by a deeper canal with the main base 8 
miles distant at Bruges. It was planned, however, to attack 



434 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

both ports, with the specific purpose of sinking 5 obsolete 
cruisers laden with concrete across the entrances to the canals. 
The operation required extensive reconstruction work on the 
vessels employed, a thorough course of training for personnel, 
suitable conditions of atmosphere, wind, and tide, and execu- 
tion of complicated movements in accordance with a time 
schedule worked out to the minute. 

At Ostend the attack failed owing to a sudden shift of wind 
which blew the smoke screen laid by motor boats back upon 
the two block ships, and so confused their approach that they 
were stranded and blown up west of the entrance. 

At Zeebrugge, two of the three block ships, the Iphigenia 
and the Intrepid, got past the heavy guns on the mole, through 
the protective nets, and into the canal, where they were sunk 
athwart the channel by the explosion of mines laid all along 
their keels. To facilitate their entrance, the cruiser Vindictive 
(Commander Alfred Carpenter), fitted with a false deck and 
18 brows or gangways for landing forces, had been brought 
up 25 minutes earlier — to be exact, at a minute past midnight — 
along the outer side of the high mole or breakwater enclosing 
the harbor. Here, in spite of a heavy swell and tide, she was 
held in position by the ex-ferryboat Daffodill, while some 300 
or 400 bluejackets and marines swarmed ashore under a violent 
fire from batteries and machine guns and did considerable in- 
jury to the works on the mole. Fifteen minutes later, an old 
British submarine was run into a viaduct connecting the mole 
with the shore and there blown up, breaking a big gap in the 
viaduct. Strange to say, the Vindictive and her auxiliaries, 
after lying more than an hour in this dangerous position, suc- 
ceeded in taking aboard all survivors from the landing party 
and getting safely away. Motor launches also rescued the 
crews of the blockships and the men — all of them wounded- 
from the submarine. One British destroyer and two motor 
boats were sunk, and the casualties were 176 killed, 412 
wounded, and 49 missing. For a considerable period there 
after, all the larger German torpedo craft remained cooped up 
at Bruges, and the Zeebrugge blockships still obstructed the 
channel at the end of the war. 




435 



■ 



436 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 



The Convoy System 

Of all the anti-submarine measures employed, prior to 
the North Sea Barrage and the Zeebrugge attack, the adoption 
of the convoy system was undoubtedly the most effective in 
checking the loss of tonnage at the height of the submarine 
campaign. Familiar as a means of commerce protection in 
previous naval wars, the late adoption of the convoy system in 
the World War occasioned very general surprise. It was felt 
by naval authorities, however, that great delay would be in- 




t.soo 



BRITISH, AII.IED AND NEUTRAL MERCHANT SHIPS DESTROYED BY GERMAN 

RAIDERS, SUBMARINES AND MINES 

(Figures in thousands of gross tons) 

The accompanying chart shows the merchant shipping captured or destroyed by 
ny in the course of the war. After 1914 the losses were inflicted almost entirely 
by submarines, either by mine laying or by torpedoes. According to a British Admiralty 
»t ;.'meiit of Dec. 5, 1919, the total loss during the war was 14,820,000 gross tons, o 1 
ui<.,: 5, 918,000 was British, and 5,918,000 was Allied or neutral. The United Stater 
lost 354 450 tons. During the same period the world's ship construction amountec 
to i<), 850, 000 tons, and enemy shipping captured and eventually put into Allied servici. 
totalled 2,393,000 tons, so that the net loss at the close of the war was abouv 
1,600,000 tons. 

curred in assembling vessels, and in restricting the speed of all 
ships of a convoy to that of the slowest unit. Merchant cap 
tains believed themselves unequal to the task of keeping sta 
tion at night in close order, with all lights out and frequent 
changes of course, and they thought that the resultant injuries 
would be almost as great as from submarines. Furthermore, 
so long as a large number of neutral vessels were at sea, it 
appeared a very doubtful expedient to segregate merchant 



COMMERCE WARFARE 



437 



vessels of belligerent nationality and thus distinguish them as 
legitimate prey. 

But in April, 191 7, the situation was indeed desperate. The 
losses had become so heavy that of every 100 ships leaving 
England it was estimated that 25 never returned. 1 The Ameri- 
can commander in European waters, Admiral Sims, reports 
Admiral Jellicoe as saying at this time, "They will win unless 
we can stop these losses — and stop them soon." 2 Definitely 
adopted in May following, the^ccmyjfjy^svstem was in general 
operation before the end of the summer, with a notable decline 
of sinkings in both the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. The 
following table, based on figures from the Naval Annual for 
19 19, indicates the number of vessels sunk for each submarine 
destroyed. It shows the decreased effectiveness of submarine 
operations after Semptember 1, 1917, which is taken as the date 





Vessels sunk 

per 
submarine 
destroyed 


Total No. 
sunk 


Aug. 1, 1914- 
Feb., 1915 


10.4 




Feb. 1, 1915- 
Feb. 1, 191 7 


48 


544 
(two years) 


Feb. i, 191 7- 
Sept. 21, 1917 


67 


736 
(7 months) 


Sept. 1, 191 7- 
April 1, 1918 


20.2 


548 
(7 montlis) 


April 1, 1918- 
Nov. 1, 1918 


12 


252 
(7 months) 



69 ships sunk, almost entirely by 
surface cruisers. 



Half by torpedo; 148 without 
warning; 3,066 lives lost. 



572 by torpedo; 595 (69%) with- 
out warning. 



448 (82%) without warning. 
2 39 (9 l( %) without warning. 



when the convoy system had come into full use, and brings out 
the crescendo of losses in 1917. 
From July 26, 19 17, to October 26, 19 18, 90,000 vessels 
were convoyed, with a total loss from the convoys of 436, or 

1 Brassey's Naval Annual, 1919. 
'World's Work, Sept., 1919. 



438 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

less than half of one per cent. The convoy system forced sub- 
marines to expose themselves to the attacks of destroyer 
escorts, or else to work close in shore to set upon vessels after 
the dispersion of the convoy. But when working close to the 
coast they were exposed to Allied patrols and submarines. 

Testifying before a German investigation committee, Cap- 
tain Bartenbach, of the U-boat section of the German Admi- 
ralty, gave the chief perils encountered by his boats as fol- 
lows: (i) mines, (2) Allied submarines, which ''destroyed a 
whole series of our boats," (3) aircraft of all types, (4) 

rmed merchantmen, (5) hydrophoTielPlan?! listening devices. 

dmiral Capelle in his testimony referred to the "weakening of 
their efforts due to "indifferent material and second-rate 

rews." 

Transport Work 

Dependent in large measure upon the anti-submarine cam- 
paign for its safety and success, yet in itself an immense 
achievement, the transport of over 2,000,000 American troops 
to France must be regarded as one of the major naval opera- 
tions of the war. Of these forces 48% were carried in Brit- 
ish, and 43% in American transports. About 83% of the con- 
voy work was under the protection of American naval vessels. 

The transportation work of the British navy, covering a 
longer period, was, of course, on a far greater scale. Speaking 
in Parliament on October 29, 191 7, Premier Lloyd George 
indicated the extent of this service as follows : "Since the be- 
ginning of the war the navy has insured the safe transporta- 
tion to the British and Allied armies of 13,000,000 men, 12,- 
000,000 horses, 25,000,000 tons of explosives and supplies, 
and 51,000,000 tons of coal and oil. The loss of men out of 
the whole 13,000,000 was 3500, of which only 2700 were lost 
through the action of the enemy. Altogether 130,000,000 
tons have been transported by British ships." These figures, 
covering but three years of the war, are of significance chiefly 
as indicating the immense transportation problems of the Brit- 
ish and Allied navies and the use made of sea communications. 

These three main Allied naval operations — the blockade of 



COMMERCE WARFARE 439 

Germany, the anti-submarine campaign, and the transporta- 
tion of American troops to France — were unquestionably de- 
cisive factors in the war. Failure in any one of them would 
have meant victory for Germany. The peace of Europe, it is 
true, could be achieved only by overcoming Germany's military 
power on land. A breakdown there, with German domination 
of the Continent, would have created a situation which it is 
difficult to envisage, and which very probably would have 
meant a peace of compromise and humiliation for England and 
America. It is obvious, however, that, but for the blockade, 
Germany could have prolonged the war; but for American 
reinforcements, France would have been overrun ; but for the 
conquest of the submarine, Great Britain would have been 
forced to surrender. 

In the spring of 1918 Germany massed her troops on the 
western front and began her final effort to break the Allied 
lines and force a decision. With supreme command for the 
first time completely centralized under Marshal Foch, and with 
the support of American armies, the Allies were able to hold 
up the enemy drives, and on July 18 begin the forward move- 
ment which pushed the Germans back upon their frontiers. 
Yet when the armistice was signed on November 11, the Ger- 
man armies still maintained cohesion, with an unbroken line 
on foreign soil. Surrender was made inevitable by internal 
breakdown and revolution, the first open manifestations of 
which appeared among the sailors of the idle High Seas 
Fleet at Kiel. 

On November 21, 19 18, this fleet, designed as the great in- 
strument for conquest of world empire, and in its prime per- 
haps as efficient a war force as was ever set afloat, steamed 
silently through two long lines of British and Allied battleships 
assembled off the Firth of Forth, and the German flags at the 
mainmasts went down at sunset for the last time. 

REFERENCES 

Brassey's Naval Annual, 1919. 

The Victory at Sea, Vice-Admiral W. S. Sims, U. S. N., 1920. 

Annual Report of the U. S Secretary of the Navy, 1918 



440 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

The Dover Patrol, 1915-1917, Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon, R. N., 
1919. 

Zeebrugge and Ostend Dispatches, ed. by C. Sanford Terry, 1919. 
Laying the North Sea Mine Barrage, Captain R. R. Belknap, 

U. S. N., U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, Jan.-Feb., 1920. 
American Submarine Operations in the World War, by Prof. 

C. S. Alden, U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings. June-July, 1920. 
For more popular treatment see also Submarine and Anti-Sub- 
marine, Sir Henry Newbolt, 1919 ; The Fighting Fleets, Ralph 

D. Payne, 1918; The U-Boat Hunters, James B. Connolly, 1918; 
Sea Warfare, Rudyard Kipling, 1917; etc. 



CHAPTER XIX 

CONCLUSION 

The brief survey of sea power in the preceding chapters has 
shown that the ocean has been the highway for the march of 
civilization and empire. Crete in its day became a great island 
power and distributed throughout the Mediterranean the wealth 
and the arts of its own culture and that of Egypt. In turn, 
Phoenicia held sway on the inland sea, and though creating 
little, she seized upon and developed the material and intellec- 
tual resources of her neighbors, and carried them not only to 
the corners of the Mediterranean, but far out on the unknown 
sea. Later when Phoenicia was subject to Persia, Athens by 
her triremes saved the growing civilization of Greece, and dur- 
ing a brief period of glory planted the seeds of Greek, as 
opposed to Asiatic culture, on the islands and coasts of the 
^Egean. After Athens, Carthage inherited the trident, and in 
turn fell before the energy of a land power, Rome. And as 
the Roman Empire grew to include practically all of the known 
world, every waterway, river and ocean, served to spread 
Roman law, engineering, and ideals of practical efficiency, at 
the same time bringing back to the heart of the Empire not 
only the products of the colonies, but such impalpable treasures 
as the art, literature, and philosophy of Greece. This was the 
story of the sea in antiquity. 

After the dissolution of the Roman empire, as Christian 
peoples were struggling in blood and darkness, a great menace 
came from Arabia, the Saracen invasion, which was checked 
successfully and repeatedly by the navy of Constantinople. To 
this, primarily, is due the preservation of the Christian ideal 
in the world. Later, the cities of Italy began to reestablish 
sea commerce, which had been for centuries interrupted by 

441 



442 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

pirates. Venice gained the ascendancy, and Venetian ships 
carried the Crusading armies during the centuries when west- 
ern peoples went eastward to fight for the Cross and brought 
back new ideas they had learned from the Infidels. Then there 
arose a new Mohammedan threat, the Turk, determined like 
the earlier Saracen to conquer the world for the Crescent. 
Constantinople, betrayed by Christian nations, fell, Christian 
peoples of the Levant were made subject to the Turk, and 
thereafter till our day the /Egean was a Turkish lake. About 
the same time a new Mohammedan sea power arose in the 
Moors of the African coast, and for a century and more the 
Mediterranean was a no-man's land between the rival peoples 
and the rival religions. 

Meanwhile the trade with the East by caravan routes to 
the Arabian Gulf had been stopped by the presence of the Turk. 
To reach the old markets, therefore, new routes had to be 
found and there came the great era of discovery. The new 
world was only an accidental discovery in a search for the 
westward route to Asia, The claims of Spain to this new 
region called forth her fleets of trading ships. But the lure 
of the West attracted the energies of the English also, and 
England and Spain clashed. As Spain became more and more 
dependent on her western colonies for income, and yet failed 
to establish her ascendancy over the Atlantic routes, she de- 
clined in favor of her enemies, England and Holland. The 
latter country, being dependent on the sea for sustenance, early 
captured a large part of the world's carrying trade, especially 
in the Mediterranean and the East. Her rich profits excited 
the envy and rivalry of the English, and in consequence, after 
three hard-fought naval wars, the scepter of the sea passed 
to England. The subsequent wars between England and 
France served only to strengthen England's control of trade 
routes and extend her colonial possessions; with one notable 
exception, when France, denying to her rival the control of 
the sea at a critical juncture in the American Revolution, de- 
prived her of her richest and most extensive colony. It was pri- 
marily England with her navy that broke the power of Na- 
poleon in the subsequent conflict, and throughout a century 



CONCLUSION 443 

of peace the spread of English speech and institutions has ex- 
tended to the uttermost parts of the world. One power in our 
day challenged Britain's control of the sea — now even more 
essential to her security than it was in the 17th century to that 
of Holland — and the World War was the consequence. 

In all this story it is interesting to note that insularity in 
position is the reverse of insularity in fact. Crete touched the 
far shores of the Mediterranean because she was an island and 
her people were forced upon the sea. Similarly, Phoenicia, 
driven to sea by mountains and desert at her back, spread her 
sails beyond the Pillars of Hercules. And England, hemmed 
in by the Atlantic, has carried her goods and her language to 
every nook and cranny of the earth. Thus the ocean has 
served less to separate than to bring together. As a com- 
mon highway it has not only excited quarrels, but estab- 
lished common interests between nations. Special agreements 
governing the suppression of piracy and the slave trade, navi- 
gation regulations and the like, have long since brought na- 
tions together in peace on a common ground. It has also gone 
far to create international law for the problems of war. Rules 
governing blockade, contraband, and neutral rights have been 
agreed upon long since. But, as every war has proved, inter- 
national law has needed a higher authority to enforce its rules 
in the teeth of a powerful belligerent. To remedy this defect 
is one of the purposes of a League of Nations. 

Such has been the significance of the sea. The nations who 
have used it have made history and have laid the rest of the 
world under their dominion intellectually, commercially, and 
politically. Indeed, the story of the sea is the history of 
civilization. 

At the conclusion of this survey, it is appropriate to pause 
and summarize what is meant by the term "sea power." It is 
a catch phrase, made famous by Mahan and glibly used ever 
since. What does sea power mean? What are its elements? 

Obviously it means, in brief, a nation's ability to enforce its 
will upon the sea. This means a navy superior to those of its 
enemies. But it means also strategic bases equipped for sup- 
plying a fleet for battle or offering refuge in defeat. To these 



444 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

bases there must run lines of communication guarded from in- 
terruption by the enemy. Imagine, for instance, the Suez or 
the Panama Canal held by a hostile force, or a battlefleet cut 
off from its fuel supply of coal or oil. 

The relation of shipping to sea power is not what it was in 
earlier days. Merchantmen are indeed still useful in war for 
transport and auxiliary service, but it is no longer true that 
men in the merchant service are trained for man-of-war ser- 
vice. The difference between them has widened as the battle- 
ship of to-day differs from a merchantman of to-day. Nor 
can a merchantship be transformed into a cruiser, as in the 
American navy of a hundred years ago. The place of ship- 
ping in sea power is therefore subsidiary. In fact, unless a 
nation can control the sea, the amount of its wealth dispersed 
in merchantmen is just SO' much loss in time of war. 

The major element in sea power is the fleet, but possession 
of the largest navy is no guarantee of victory or even of con- 
trol of the sea. Size is important, but it is an interesting fact 
that most of the great victories in naval history have been 
won by a smaller fleet over a larger. The effectiveness of a 
great navy depends first on its quality, secondly, on how it is 
handled, and thirdly, on its power of reaching the enemy's 
communications. 

The quality of a navy is two-fold, material and personal. In 
material, the great problem of modern days is to keep abreast 
of the time. The danger to a navy lies in conservatism and 
bureaucratic control. There is always the chance that a weaker 
power may defeat the stronger, not by using the old weapons, 
but by devising some new weapon that will render the old ones 
obsolete. The trouble with the professional man in any walk 
of life has always been that he sticks to the traditional ways. 
In consequence he lays himself open to the amateur, who, car- 
ing nothing about tradition, beats him with something novel. 
The inventions that have revolutionized naval warfare have 
come from men outside the naval profession. Thus the Ro- 
mans, unable to match the Carthaginians in seamanship, made 
that seamanship of no value by their invention of the corvus. 
Greek fire not only saved the insignificant fleets of the Eastern 



CONCLUSION 445 

Empire, but annihilated the huge armadas of Saracen and 
Slav. If the South in our Civil War had possessed the neces- 
sary resources, her ironclad rams would have made an end of 
the Union navy and of the war. In our own time the German 
submarine came within an ace of winning the war despite all 
the Allied dreadnoughts, because its potentialities had not been 
realized and no counter measures devised. A navy that drops 
behind is lost. 

The personal side is a matter of training and morale. The 
material part is of no value unless it is operated by skill and 
by the will to win. Slackness or inexperience or lack of heart 
in officers or men — any of these may bring ruin. Napoleon 
once spoke of the Russian army as brave, but as "an army 
without a soul." A navy must have a soul. Unfortunately, 
the tendency in recent years has been to emphasize the material 
and the mechanical at the expense of the intellectual and spirit- 
ual. With all the enormous development of the ships and 
weapons, it must be remembered that the man is, and always 
will be, greater than the machine. 

As to handling the navy, first of all the War Staff and the 
commander in chief must solve the strategic problem correct- 
ly. The fate of the Spanish Armada in the 16th Century and 
that of the Russian navy at the beginning of the 20th are elo- 
quent of the effect of bad strategy on a powerful fleet. Sec- 
ondly, the commander in chief must be possessed of the right 
fighting doctrine — the spirit of the offensive. In all ages the 
naval commander who sought to achieve his purpose by avoid- 
ing battle went to disaster. The true objective must be, now 
as always, the destruction of the enemy's fleet. 

Such are the material and the spiritual essentials of sea 
power. The phrase has become so popular that a superior fleet 
has been widely accepted as a talisman in war. The idea is 
that a nation with sea power must win. But with all the tre- 
mendous "influence of sea power on history," the student must 
not be misled into thinking that sea power is invincible. The 
Athenian navy went to ruin under the catapults of Syracuse 
whose navy was insignificant. Carthage, the sea power, suc- 
cumbed to a land power, Rome. In modern times France, 



446 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

with a navy second to England's, fell in ruin before Prussia, 
which had practically no navy at all. And in the World War 
it required the entry of a new ally, the United States, to save 
the Entente from defeat at the hands of land power, despite 
an overwhelming- superiority on the sea. 

The significance of sea power is communications. Just so 
far as sea control affects lines of communications vital to 
either belligerent, so far does it affect the war. To a sea 
empire like the British, sea control is essential as a measure of 
defense. If an enemy controls the sea the empire will fall 
apart like a house of cards, and the British Isles will be speed- 
ily starved into submission. It is another thing, however, to 
make the navy a sword as well as a shield. Whenever the 
British navy could cut the communications of the enemy, as 
in the case of the wars with Spain and Holland, it was ter- 
ribly effective. When it fought a nation like Russia in the 
Crimean War, it hardly touched the sources of Russian sup- 
plies, because these came by the interior land communications. 
So also< the French navy in 1870 could not touch a single im- 
portant line of German communications and its effect there- 
fore was negligible. If in 1914 Russia, for example, had been 
neutral, no Allied naval superiority could have saved France 
from destruction by the combined armies of Germany and 
Austria, just as the Grand Fleet was powerless to check the 
conquest or deny the possession of Belgium. It must be borne 
in mind that a land power has the advantages of central posi- 
tion and interior lines, and the interior lines of to-day are 
those of rail and motor transport, offering facilities for a rapid 
concentration on any front. 

Of course, modern life and modern warfare are so 1 com- 
plex that few nations are able to live and wage war entirely on 
their own resources; important communications extend across 
the sea. In this respect the United States is singularly fortu- 
nate. With the exception of rubber, every essential is produced 
in our country, and the sea power that would attempt to 
strangle the United States by a blockade on two coasts would 
find it unprofitable even if it were practicable. A hostile navy 
would have to land armies to strike directly at the manufac- 



CONCLUSION 447 

turing cities near the seaboard in order to affect our communi- 
cations. In brief, sea power is decisive just so far as it cuts 
the enemy's communications. 

Finally in considering sea power we should note the impor- 
tance of coordinating naval policies with national. The char- 
acter of a navy and the size of a navy depend on what policy 
a nation expects to stand for. It is the business of a navy 
to stand behind a nation's will. For Great Britain, circum- 
stances of position have long made her policy consistent, with- 
out regard to change of party. She had to dominate the sea 
to insure the safety of the empire. With the United States, 
the situation has been different. The nation has not been 
conscious of any foreign policy, with the single exception of 
the Monroe Doctrine. And even this has changed in character 
since it was first enunciated. 

At the present day, for example, how far does the United 
States purpose to go in the Monroe Doctrine? Shall we at- 
tempt to police the smaller South and Central American na- 
tions ? Shall we make the Caribbean an area under our naval 
control ? What is to be our policy toward Mexico ? How far 
are we willing to go to sustain the Open Door policy in the 
Far East? Are we determined to resist the immigration of 
Asiatics? Are we bound to hold against conquest our out- 
lying possessions, — the Philippines, Guam, Hawaiian Islands, 
and Alaska? Shall we play a "lone hand" among nations, or 
join an international league? Until there is some answer to 
these questions of foreign policy, our naval program is based 
on nothing definite. In short, the naval policy of a nation 
should spring from its national policy. 

On that national policy must be based not only the types 
of ships built and their numbers, but also the number and locale 
of the naval bases and the entire strategic plan. In the past 
there has been too little mutual understanding between the 
American navy and the American people. The navy — the Ser- 
vice, as it is appropriately called — is the trained servant of the 
republic. It is only fair to ask that the republic make clear 
what it expects that servant to do. But before a national 
policy is accepted, it must be thought out to its logical con- 



448 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

elusion by both the popular leaders and naval advisers. As 
Mahan has said, "the naval officer must be a statesman as 
well as a seaman." Is the policy accepted going to conflict 
with that of another nation; if so, are we prepared to accept 
the consequences? 

The recent history of Germany is a striking example of the 
effect of a naval policy on international relations. The closing 
decade of the 19th century found Great Britain still following 
the policy of "splendid isolation," with France and Russia her 
traditional enemies. Her relations with Germany were friend- 
ly, as they always had been. At the close of the century, the 
Kaiser, inspired by Mahan's "Influence of Sea Power on His- 
tory" launched the policy of a big navy. First, he argued, 
German commerce was growing with astonishing rapidity. It 
was necessary, according to Mahan, to have a strong navy 
to protect a great carrying trade. This von Tirpitz 1 emphasizes, 
though he never makes clear just what precise danger threat- 
ened the German trading fleets, provided Germany maintained 
a policy of friendly relations with England. Secondly, Ger- 
many found herself with no outlet for expansion. The best 
colonial fields had already been appropriated by other coun- 
tries, chiefly England. To back up German claims to new ter- 
ritory or trading concessions, it was necessary to have a strong 
navy. All this was strictly by the book, and it is characteristic 
of the German mind that it faithfully followed the text. " Un- 
set e Zukunft," cried the Kaiser, "liegt auf dem W assert" But 
what was implied in this proposal? A great navy increasing 
rapidly to the point of rivaling that of England could be 
regarded by that country only as a pistol leveled at her head. 
England would be at the mercy of any power that could defeat 
her navy. And this policy coupled with the demand for "a 
place in the sun," threatened the rich colonies that lay under 
the British flag. It could not be taken otherwise. 

These implications began to bear fruit after their kind. 

In the place of friendliness on the part of the English, — a 

friendliness uninterrupted by war, and based on the blood 

of their royal family and the comradeship in arms against 

*My Memoirs, Chap, xv and passim. 



CONCLUSION 449 

France in the days of Louis XIV, Frederick the Great, and 
Napoleon — there developed a growing hostility. In vain mis- 
sions were sent by the British Government to promote a bet- 
ter understanding, for the Germans declined to accept either 
a "naval holiday" or a position of perpetual naval inferiority. 
In consequence, England abandoned her policy of isolation, and 
came to an understanding with her ancent enemies, Russia and 
France. Thus Germany arrayed against herself all the re- 
sources of the British Empire and in this act signed her own 
death warrant. 

A final word as to the future of sea power. The influence 
of modern inventions is bound to affect the significance of the 
sea in the future. Oceans have practically dwindled away as 
national barriers. Wireless and the speed of the modern 
steamship have reduced the oceans to ponds. "Splendid isola- 
tion" is now impossible. Modern artillery placed at Calais, for 
instance, could shell London and cover the transportation, of 
troops in the teeth of a fleet. Aircraft cross land and sea with 
equal ease. The submersible has come to stay. Indeed, it 
looks as if the navy of the future will tend first to the sub- 
mersible types and later abandon the sea for the air, and the 
"illimitable pathways of the sea" will yield to still more illimit- 
able pathways of the sky. The consequence is bound to be a 
closer knitting of the peoples of the world through the con- 
quering of distance by time. 

This bringing together breeds war quite as easily as peace, 
and the progress of invention makes wars more frightful. The 
closely knit economic structure of Europe did not prevent the 
greatest war in history and there is little hope for the idea 
that wars can never occur again. The older causes of war lay 
in pressure of population, the temptation of better lands, 
racial hatreds or ambitions, religious fanaticism, dynastic 
aims, and imperialism. Some of these remain. The chief 
modern source of trouble is trade rivalry, with which im- 
perialism is closely interwoven and trade rivalry makes enemies 
of old friends. There is, therefore, a place for navies still. 

At present there are two great naval powers, Great Britain 
arid the United States. A race in naval armaments between 



450 A HISTORY OF SEA POWER 

the two would be criminal folly, and could lead to only one 
disastrous end. The immediate way toward guaranteeing free- 
dom of the seas is a closer entente between the two English- 
speaking peoples, whose common ground extends beyond their 
speech to institutions and ideals of justice and liberty. The 
fine spirit of cooperation produced by the World War should 
be perpetuated in peace for the purpose of maintaining peace. 
In his memoirs von Tirpitz mourns the fact that now "Anglo- 
Saxondom" controls the world. There is small danger that 
where public opinion rules, the two peoples will loot the world 
to their own advantage. On the other hand, there is every 
prospect that, for the immediate future, sea power in their 
hands can be made the most potent influence toward peace, 
and the preservation of that inheritance of civilization which 
has been slowly accumulated and spread throughout the world 
by those peoples of every age who have been the pathfinders on 
the seas. 



INDEX 



A. 



Abercromby, British general, 226, 
252 

Aboukir, Hogue, and Cressy, 
British cruisers, loss of, 355 

Aboukir Bay, battle of, see Nile 

Actium, campaign of, 61-64; battle 
of, 64-69 

/Egospotami, battle of, 24, 47 

Agrippa, Roman admiral, 62-66 

Aircraft, in World War, 411, 
429, 449 

Albuquerque, Portuguese vice- 
roy, 118 

Alfred, king of England, 71, 130, 145 

Algeciras Convention, 347 

AH Pasha, Turkish admiral, 104, 
105, 107 

Allemand, French admiral, 224 

Almeida, Portuguese leader, 117-118 

Amboyna, 143, 170 

Amiens, treaty of, 227, 259, 261 

Amsterdam, 119, 133, 141, 142 

Anthony, Roman general, at Ac- 
tium, 61-68 

Antwerp, 119, 133, 140 

Arabs, at war with Eastern Empire, 
72-83, 441-442; as traders, 83; 
ships of, 117 

Arbuthnot, British admiral, 388 

Ariabignes, Persian admiral, 33, 36 

Aristides, 36 

Armada, see Spanish Armada 

Armed Neutrality, league of, 253 

Armor, 289, 296 

Armstrong, Sir William, 289 

Athens, see Greece 

Audacious, British ship, 355 

August 10, battle of, 334 

Austerlitz battle of, 279 

Austria, in Napoleonic Wars, 232, 
244, 253, 279 ; at war with Italy, 
296-303; in Triple Alliance, 345; 
in World War, 351 



B. 



Bacon, Roger, in, 112, 121 

Bagdad Railway, 346 

Bantry Bay, action in, 194; at- 
tempted landing in, 233 

Barbarigo, Venetian admiral, 102, 
104- 1 05 

Barbarossa, Turkish admiral, 90-92, 

95-97 

Barham, First Lord of Admiralty, 
266 

Bart, Jean, French naval leader, 195 

Battle cruiser, see Ships of War 

Beachy Head, battle of, 194 

Beatty, British admiral, at Heligo- 
land Bight, 352-354; at Dogger 
Bank, 370-373; at Jutland, 389- 
408, 413, 415 

Berlin Decree, 279 

Bismarck, 297, 345 

Blake, British admiral, 169, 171-182, 
194, 414, 416 

Blockade, in American Civil War. 
290; in World War, 419-424, 439 

Boisot, Dutch admiral, 139 

Bonaparte, see Napoleon 

Bossu, Spanish admiral, 138-139 

Boxer Rebellion, 329-330 

Boyne, battle of, 194 

Bragadino, Venetian general, 100 

Breda, peace of, 188 

Bridport, British admiral, 232, 233, 

234 
Brill, capture of, 138 
Brueys, French admiral, 224, 248 

250 
Burney, British admiral, 401, 415 
Bushnell, David, 293-294 



Cabot, John, 121 

Cadiz, founded, 17; British expedi- 
tions to, 155, 165, 168; blockaded 



451 



452 



INDEX 



by Blake, 181 ; blockaded by Jer- 
vis, 244; Allied fleet in, 270, 274, 
277 
Calder, British admiral, 243; in ac- 
tion with Villeneuve, 266, 267- 
269, 270 
Camara, Spanish admiral, 319 
Camperdown, battle of, 223, 234-237 
Canidius, Roman general, 67 
Garden, British admiral, 375-379 
Carpenter, Alfred, British com- 
mander, 434 
Carthage, founded, 18; at war with 
Greece,. 20, 38; in Punic Wars, 
49-60, 76, 441 
Cervantes, 102, 119 
Cervera, Spanish admiral, 315 ; in 

Santiago campaign, 321-326 
Ceylon, 83, 226, 227 
Champlain, battle of Lake, 284 
Charlemagne, 85, 130 
Charles II of England, 183, 188, 189 
Charles V of Spain, 91, 92, 126, 

127, 134 
Charleston, attack on, 69 
Chatham, raided by Dutch, 188 
Chauncey, U. S. commodore, 283 
China, in ancient times, 25 ; first 
ships to, 118; at war with Japan, 
304-310; in disruption, 328-329 
Chios, battle of, 286 
Churchill, Winston, 375-378, 381, 

383 
Cinque Ports, 145 
Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, in 

Actium campaign, 61, 63-68 
Clerk, of Elgin, 203, 204 
Collingwood, British admiral, 239, 

243; at Trafalgar, 272, 274-277 
Colonna, admiral of Papal States, 

102, 105 
Colport, British admiral, 233 
Columbus, 112, 120, 121; voyages 

of, 122-125 
Commerce, of Phoenicians, 16-19; 

under Roman Empire, 70; with 

the East, no, 113-118; in northern 

Europe, 131-132; in modern times, 

312-313 
Commerce Warfare, in Dutch War 
of Independence, 137-138; in 
Napoleonic Wars, 259-260; in 
War of 1812, 281, 284; in World 
War, 369, 419-440 
Communications, in warfare, 446 
Compass, introduction of, in 



Condalmiero, Venetian admiral, 
93, 96 

Conflans, French admiral, 197, 
198, 199 

Constantinople, founded, 71 ; at- 
tacked by Arabs, 72-83 ; attacked 
by Russians, 83-84; sacked by 
Crusaders, 85 ; captured by Turks, 
86, 89, no; in World War, 375, 
381-382, 384; 441, 442 

Continental System, 279-280, 285 

Continuous Voyage, doctrine of, 
290, 420-421 

Contraband, 253 

Convoy, System in World War, 
436-438 

Cook, Captain James, 219-220 

Copenhagen, battle of, 223, 236, 252- 

259 

Corinthian Gulf, battle of, 35, 40-43 

Cornwallis, British admiral, 263, 
265, 267, 270 

Coronel, battle of, 359-361 

Corsica, 17, 238 

Corunna, Armada sails from, 158; 
attacked by Drake, 165 ; Allied 
fleet in, 269 

Corvi, 52, 55, 444 

Cradock, British admiral, at Cor- 
onel, 358-361 

Crete, 15-16, 25, 26, 43, 247, 442, 443 

Cromwell, Oliver, 170, 181, 182 

Custozza, battle of, 297, 298 

Cyprus, 88, 99. 

D. 

Da Gama, Vasco, 114, 116-117 
Dardanelles, German squadron en- 
ters, 356-357; campaign of, 374- 

38.5 
Darius, king of Persia, 21, 27, 28 
De Grasse, French admiral, at Vir- 
ginia Capes, 207-211; at Saints' 

Passage, 212-215 
De Guichen, French admiral, 203, 

204 
Denmark, in Copenhagen campaign, 

252-259 
De Ruyter, Dutch admiral, 173, 175, 

179, 182, 184-190, 194, 416 
D'Estaing, French admiral, 202-203, 

227 
Destroyer, see Ships of War 
Dewa, Japanese admiral, 339, 341 
Dewey, U. S. admiral, at Manila, 

316-320, 415 



INDEX 



453 



De Witt, Dutch admiral, 172, 177 

Diaz, Bartolomeo, 114, 116 

Diedrichs, German admiral, 320 

Director fire, 350, 410 

Dirkzoon, Dutch admiral, 138 

Diu, battle of, 118 

Dogger Bank, Russian fleet off, 
335 ; action off, 364, 3^9-374 

Don Juan of Austria, at Lepanto, 
100-109; X 3S 

Doria, Andrea, Genoese admiral, 91, 
92, 95-98 

Doria, Gian Andrea, Genoese ad- 
miral 98-108 

Dragut, Turkish commander, 90, 
98 

Drake, Sir Francis, British admiral, 
voyages of, 153-155 ; in Armada 
campaign, 157-163 ; last years of, 
165 

Dreadnought, see Ships of War 

Drepanum, battle of, 57 

Duguay-Trouin, French comman- 
der, 195, 197 

Duilius, Roman consul, 52 

Dumanoir, French admiral, 277 

Duncan, British admiral, at Cam- 
perdown, 234-237 

Dungeness, battle of, 172 



East Indies Companies, British and 

Dutch, 141 
Ecnomus, battle of, 53-56 
Egypt, early ships of, 15 ; Napoleon 

in, 233, 347, 357, 374, 441 
Elizabeth, queen of England, 125, 

138, 151, 152, 155, 166 
Emden, German cruiser, 355 ; cruise 

of, 366-368 
England, early naval history of, 

145-151; at war with Spain, 151- 

167; at war with Holland, 168- 

192 ; at war with France, 193-221 ; 

plans for invasion of, 197-198, 

232, 261-265. See Great Britain 
Entente of Great Britain, France, 

and Russia, 347 
Ericsson, John, 287, 290, 292 
Erie, battle of Lake, 284 
Eurybiades, Spartan commander, 

32, 45 
Evan-Thomas, British admiral, 390, 

392, 393, 396-398, 401 
Evertsen, Dutch admiral, 174 



F. 

Falkland Islands, battle of, 363-366 
Farragut, U. S. admiral, 292, 296, 

317, 381, 414 
Fighting Instructions, of British 
Navy, 184, 187, 190, 200, 206, 211, 
216-217, 416 
Fireships, 162, 178 
First of June, battle of, 227-232 
Fisher, British admiral, 348, 359, 

377, 378 381, 384 
Fisher, Fort, capture of, 293 
Fleet in Being, 190, 321, 331, 358, 

417 
Foch, French general, 439 
Foley, British captain, 249, 256 
Four Days' Battle, in Dutch Wars, 

185-186 
France, at war w ,- th England in 
18th century, 193-221 ; in Napo- 
leonic Wars, 222-280; in Far East, 
329 ; aids Russia, 335 ; in World 
War, 345, 347 
Francis I, of France, 91, 125 
Frobisher, Martin, 158 
Fulton, Robert, 270, 287; his sub- 
marine, 293-295 



Gabbard, battle of, 176 

Galleon of Venice, Venetian ship, 

93, 96, 97, 98, 103 
Galley, galleon, galleas, see Ships of 

War _ 
Gallipoli Peninsula, operations on, 

383-385; see Dardanelles 
Ganteaume, French admiral, 263, 

265 
Genoa, 82, 85 ; at war with Venice 

88, 122, 135 
Germany, early commerce under 

Hausa, 131-133; unification of, 

286; in Far East, 320, 328, 330; 

aids Russia, 335 ; growth of, 345- 

347 ; in World War, 345 ff. 
Gibraltar, captured by British, 196; 

blockaded, 218, 227 
Gob en, German battle cruiser, es- 
cape of, 355-357.; 381, 411 
Goodenough, British naval officer, 

at Heligoland Bight, 352-353 ; at 

Jutland, 396, 401, 413 
Grand Fleet, British, 349; strength 

of, 350, 351, 369; at Jutland, 386- 

417; 432 



454 



INDEX 



Graves, British admiral, 209-211 
Gravina, Spanish admiral, 266, 274, 

277 
Great Britain, in Napoleonic Wars, 
222-280 ; in War of 1812, 280-285 ; 
in World War, 345 ff. See Eng- 
land. 
Greece, 16; at war with Persia, 27- 
39 ; in Peloponnesian War, 39-47 ; 
441 
Greek fire, 77, 78, 80, 94, 444 
Grenville, Sir Richard, 165 
Guns, gunpowder, see Ordnance 
Gunfleet, battle of, 186-188 

H. 

Hampton Roads, battle of, 287, 

291-292 
Hannibal, 60 

Hanseatic League, 131-133, 14S 
Hase, German naval officer, quoted, 

404-407 
Hawke, British admiral, 108-200, 

227, 414, 416 
Hawkins, John, 151, 152-153, 158 
Heath, British admiral, 388 
Heimskirck, Jacob van, Dutch sea- 
man, 141, 142 
Heligoland, 227, 280; battle of, 297, 

299 
Heligoland Bight, battle of, 351- 

354, 4ii 

Hellespont, 28, 36 

Henry, Prince, the Navigator, 114, 
116 

Henry VIII, of England, 146, 148 

Herbert, Lord Torrington, British 
admiral, 194, 195 

Hermsea, battle of, 56 

High Seas Fleet, of Germany, 349; 
strength of, 350; at Jutland, 373, 
387-417; surrender of, 439-440 

Hindenberg, German general, 420 

Hipper, German admiral, at Dog- 
ger Bank, 370, 373; at Jutland, 
300-391, 393, 396-398, 403 

Hobson, U. S. naval officer, 324 

Hoche, French general, 233 

Holland, see Netherlands 

Holland, John P., 296 

Hood, British admiral, at Virginia 
Capes, 207-211; at Saints' Pas- 
sage, 212, 215, 238, 239 

Hood, British rear-admiral, at Jut- 
land, 388, 392, 397, 308, 401 



Horton, Max, British commander, 

35S 
Hotham, British admiral, 238-239 
Howard, Thomas, of Effingham, 

158, 160, 178 
Howe, British admiral, 202; at 

First of June, 227-232 
Hudson, Henry, 141 
Hughes, British admiral 



Interior Lines, defined, 28 

Italy, at war with Austria, 296-303 ; 

in World War, 345 
Ito, Japanese admiral, at the Yalu, 

306-308 

J. 

Jamaica, captured by British, 181 

Janissaries, 89, 105 

Japan, at war with China, 304-310; 
at war with Russia, 330-343 

Jellicoe, British admiral, 350; at 
Jutland, 387-417, 437 

Jervis, Earl St. Vincent, British ad- 
miral, 232, 234, 236; character of, 
239-240; at Cape St. Vincent, 241- 
244, 263, 295, 417 

Jones, Paul, American naval officer, 
200-201, 202 

Juan, see Don Juan 

Jutland, battle of, 374, 386-418 

K. 

Kamimura, Japanese admiral, 334 
Karlsruhe, German cruiser, 355, 

367 
Keith, British admiral, 263 
Kentish Knock, battle of, 172 
Keyes, British naval officer, 352, 

353, 433 
Kiao-chau, seized by Germany, 320, 

328, 334, 346, 3^ 
Kiel Canal, 348, 349, 408 
Kitchener, British general, 377-379, 

383, 384 
Konigsberg, German cruiser, 355, 

367 
Korea, 304, 310, 330, 343 



Lake, Simon, 296 

La Hogue, battle of, 195 



INDEX 



455 



La Touche Treville, French ad- 
miral, 262, 265 
Lepanto, campaign of, 100-103 ; 

battle of, 103-108, 148 
Lepidus, Roman general, 61 
Leyden, siege of, 139-140 
Lowestoft, battle of, 184-185 
London. Declaration of, 421 
Louis XIV of France, 185, 189, 190, 

191, 193, 195, 448 
Lusitania, loss of, 424 

M. 

McGiffin, American naval officer, at 
the Yalu, 305, 307, 309 

Macdonough, U. S. commodore, 284 

Magellan, Portuguese navigator, 
119-121 

M&han, American naval officer, 
quoted, 60, 189, I97,»2i6, 270, 310, 
313, 324, 345; in Spanish-Amer- 
ican War, 321, 348, 443, 448 

Maine, U. S. battleship, 314 

Makaroff, Russian admiral, 332 

Malta, 17; siege of, 98, 227, 247, 
253, 261, 266, 280, 356 

Manila, battle of, 316-320 

Marathon, battle of, 28, 37 

Mardonius, 27, yj> 38 

Martel, Charles, 82 

Mary Queen of Scots, 151, 152 

Matelieff, de Jonge, Dutch seaman, 

143 
Medina Sidonia, Duke of, 156-162, 

178. 
Merrimac, Confederate ram, 290; 

in action with Monitor, 291-292 
Milne, British admiral, 357 
Mine barrage, in North Sea, 432- 

433 
Missiessy, French admiral, 224, 263 
Mohammed, 72, 73 
Mohammedans, see Arabs 
Monitor, U. S. ironclad, 287, 290- 

292 
Monk, British admiral, 173-179, 183, 

185-188, 190, 191, 194 
Monroe Doctrine, 313, 347, 447 
Montojo, Spanish admiral, 317, 319 
Moore, British admiral, 373 
Muaviah, Emir of Syria, 73-78 
Mukden, battle of, 335 
Miiller, German naval officer, 367 
Muza, Mohammedan general, 79, 82 
Mycale, battle of, 38 
Mylse, battle of, 52-53 



N. 

Napoleon, quoted, 222, 223, 224, 
233; in Italy, 238, 239; in Egypt, 
244-248, 252; plans northern coali- 
tion, 253; attempts invasion of 
England, 261-265 ; instructs Vil- 
leneuve, 269, 270; adopts con- 
tinental system, 279-280, 414, 419, 

445 

Naupaktis, battle of, 43-45 

Navarino, battle of, 286 

Navigation, progress in, 111- 
112 

Navigation Acts, 170 

Navy, British, administration of, 
146, 150; under Commonwealth, 
168; training of officers for, 183; 
at Restoration, 183 ; in 18th cen- 
tury, 202 ; in French Revolu- 
tionary Wars, 225 ; mutiny in, 
2 34-235; in War of 1812, 281; 
size of, in World War, 350. See 
England, Great Britain 
French, in 18th century, 201-202; 
in French Revolution, 223-225. 
See France 

United States, in War of 1812, 
281-284; in Civil War, 290-296; in 
World War, 432-433. See United 
States 

Nebogatoff, Russian admiral, 336, 
342 

Nelson, Horatio, British admiral, 
169, 178, 179, 182, 223; in Medi- 
terranean, 238-240; at Cape St. 
Vincent, 241-244; at the Nile, 244- 
252; at Copenhagen, 252-259; in 
the Channel, 259 ; in Trafalgar 
campaign and battle, 265-270, 310, 
360, 414, 415 

Netherlands, at war with Hansa, 
132 ; commerce of, 133, 140-143, 
168, 191, 442; at war with Spain, 
134-140; at war with England, 
168 192 ; in War of American 
Revolution, 200, 232; in Napo- 
leonic Wars, 237, 279 

New York, taken by British, 184, 
191 ; held by Howe, 202 

Nicosia, siege of, 99-100 

Nile, campaign of, 244-248; battle 
of, 249-252 

Nore, mutiny at, 234-235 

North Sea Mine Barrage, see Mine 
Barrage 



456 



INDEX 



o. 



Octavius, Roman emperor, at Ac- 

tium, 61-69 
Ontario, campaign on Lake, 283 
Open Door Policy, 330, 447 
Oquendo, Spanish naval officer, 157 
Ordnance, early types of, 94; intro- 
duced on ships, 146; at Armada, 
150; breech-loading, 289; rifled, 
289 ; long range, 374 
Oregon, U. S. battleship, cruise 
of, 314, 315; at Santiago, 326, 327 



Panama Canal, 348, 362 

Parker, British admiral, at Copen 

hagen, 254-258 
Parma, Duke of, 135, 156, 158, 160, 

162 
Peloponnesian War, 39-47 
Penn, British admiral, 174, 175, 

181 
Perry, U. S. Commodore, 284 
Persano, Italian admiral, at Lissa, 

298-303 
Persia, conquers Phoenicia, 20-21 ; 

at war with Greece, 27-39 
Pharselis, battle of, 75 
Philip II, of Spain, 99, 100, 101, 128, 

134, 151, 152, 156, 157, 158, 165, 

166 . . 
Phoenicia, commerce and colonies 

of, 16-20, 25-26; at Salamis, 33- 
34, 36, 49, 441, 443 
Phormio, Greek admiral, 39-45 
Platea, battle of, 21, 37, 38 
Port Arthur, 307; given to Japan, 
310; seized by Russia, 329; op- 
erations around, 332-335 ; fall of, 
334, 343 
Portland, battle of, 173-175 
Portsmouth, Treaty of, 343 
Portugal, commerce and colonies 

of, 114-121; decline of, 143 
Prevesa, battle of, 96-98, 103 
Prussia, in Northern Coalition, 253 ; 

at war with Austria, 297 
Ptolemy, 112 



Q. 



"Q-ships," 431 

Quiberon Bay, battle of, 198-199, 
227 



R. 



Raleigh, Sir Walter, 149, 164 

Recalde, Spanish naval officer, 157 

Renaissance, 86, 112, 121 

Revenge, Drake's flagship, 149, 
158; last fight of, 165 

Robeck, British admiral, at Dar- 
danelles, 379 

Rodman, U. S. admiral, 432 

Rodney, British admiral, 203; at 
Saints' Passage, 212-217 

Rojdestvensky, Russian admiral, 
cruise of, 335-339; at Tsushima, 
339-343 

Rome, in Punic Wars, 49-60; in 
Actium campaign, 61-70; wars of 
Eastern Empire, 71-86; 441 

Rooke, British admiral, 196 

Roosevelt, Theodore, 316, 324, 343, 

347 
Rosyth, British base, 348, 355, 387 
Rupert, Prince, 169, 185, 186 
Russia, in Napoleonic Wars, 250, 
252, 259, 266, 280; in Far East, 
328 330; at war with Japan, 330- 
343, in World War, 345, 375, 417, 
446 
Ruyter. See De Ruyter 



Saint Andree, Jean Bon, 228 

St. Vincent, battle of Cape, 223, 

233,_ 241-244 
St. Vincent, Earl of. See Jervis 
Saints' Passage, battle of, 212- 

217 
Salamis, battle of, 21, 32-39; 45-47; 

campaign of, 28-32 
Salonika, 385 

Sampson, U. S. admiral, in San- 
tiago campaign, 320-327 
San Juan de Ulna, fight at, 153 
Santa Cruz, Spanish admiral, 102, 

107, 155, 157 
Santiago, battle of, 320-327 
Saracens. See Arabs 
Scapa Flow, British base, 348, 351, 

355, 386, 432 
Scheer, German admiral, at Jutland, 

387-411 
Scheldt River, 133; battle in, 139; 

blockaded by Dutch, 142, 156, 

225, 261 
Scheriningen, battle of, 177 



INDEX 



457 



Schley, U. S. naval officer, in San- 
tiago campaign; 321-323, 326 

Schoonevelt, battle of, 189 

Scott, Sir Percy, British admiral, 
348, 410 

Sea Beggars, 135-137 

Sea Power, preserves Greece, 39; 
England's gains by, 191, 196-197, 
220; in Napoleonic Wars, 222-223, 
285 ; in World War, 348-349, 385 J 
influence of, 441-443; elements of, 

443-445 
Selim the Drunkard, Sultan of 

Turkey, 99 
Semenoff, Russian naval officer, 

335, 339 . ' 

Seymour, British admiral, at Ar- 
mada, 158 
Shafter, U. S. general, 324, 325 
Shimonoseki, Treaty of, 310 
Ships of War, "round" and "long," 
19; trireme, 19, 21-24; pentecon- 
ter, 32; liburna, 62; galley, 69, 93- 
95 ; dromon, 74 ; galleas, 102-103, 
148; junk, 117; Viking craft, 131; 
galleon, 147-149; two and three- 
deckers, 178; steam, 287; sub- 
marine, 293-296, 426-428; de- 
stroyer, 296, 412; battle cruiser, 
343, 348, 369; dreadnought, 343, 
348 
Sicily, 17, 38, 46; in Punic Wars, 

50-59 

Sims, U. S. admiral, 431, 437 

Sinope, bombardment of, 288 

Sirocco. Turkish admiral, 104, 
105 

Sluis, battle of, 146 

Solebay, battle of, 189 

Soliman the Magnificent, Sultan of 
Turkey, 92, 98 

Souchon, German admiral, 356, 357 

Spain, at war with Turks, 100-108; 
discoveries of, 121-128; at war 
with Dutch, 134-143 ; at war with 
England, 151-167, 442; in Napo- 
leonic Wars, 240, 265 ; at war with 
United States, 313-328 

Spanish Armada, 128, 141, 149, 156- 
167, 445 

Sparta. See Greece. 

Spee, German admiral, 358-366, 

3 g 9 
Steam navigation, beginnings of, 

287 
Sturdee, British admiral, 363-36$ 



Submarine, early types of, 293-296; 
in World War, 350, 420, 423-439, 

445 
Suez Canal, 357, 374 
Suffren, French admiral, 201, 203, 

217-218, 220, 228 
Syracuse, at war with Athens, 46- 

47, 76, 247 

T. 

Tactics, of galleys, 94-95 ; after use 
of sails and guns, 163-164; in 
Dutch wars, 179; in 18th century, 
194, 216-217; after use of armor, 
296-297; influenced by Lissa, 310; 
at Jutland, 411-416; in submarine 
warfare, 429-431 

Takeomi, Japanese naval officer, 339 

Tegetthoff, Austrian admiral, at 
Lissa, 299-303 

Teneriffe, attacked by Blake, 181 

Terschelling, raided by English, 
188 

Texel, battle of, 189, 190 

Themistocles, 28, 31, 32, 37, 43, 45 

Theophanes, 84, 85 

Thermopyke, battle of, 29, 31 

Ting, Chinese admiral, at the Yalu, 
305, 306 

Tirpitz, German admiral, 346, 410, 
411, 448, 450 

Togo, Japanese admiral, 304; at 
battle of 10th of August, 333-334; 
at Tsushima, 339-342 

Togo, Japanese squadron comman- 
der, 339 

Tordesillas, Treaty of, 125 

Torpedoes, origin of name, 295 ; 
Whitehead, 296; in Russo-Jap- 
anese war, 342, 343 

Torrington, Earl of. See Herbert 

Toscanelli, Paul, 122 

Toulon, French base, 226, 238, 246, 
263 _ 

Tourville, French admiral, 194, 195 

Trafalgar, battle of, 178, 179, 223, 
236, 265-279 ._ 

Transport service, in World War, 
438-439 

Triple Alliance, 345 

Tromp, Cornelius, Dutch admiral, 
185-188 

Tromp, Martin, Dutch admiral, 169, 
171-179, 182, 185, 190, 416 

Troubridge, British naval officer, 
239, 241, 250 



458 



INDEX 



Tsuboi, Japanese admiral, at the 

Yalu, 306-309 
Tsushima, battle of, 339-343 
Tunis, 18; captured by Spanish, 91- 

92 ; attacked by Blake, 180 
Turkey, rise of, 89-90; at war with 

Venice and Spain, 90-109; in 

World War, 355, 357, 374-384, 442 
Tyrwhitt, British naval officer, 351, 

352, 353 



U. 



Ulm, battle of, 279 

Uluch AH, Turkish leader, 90; in 
Lepanto campaign, 101, 104, 106- 
108 

United States, in American Revolu- 
tion, 200-212; in War of 1812, 
280-285; in Civil War, 286, 290- 
296; in Spanish-American War, 
313-328; in World War, 424, 432- 
433, 438-439; naval problems of, 
446-447. See Navy 

V. 

Valdes, Diego Flores de, Spanish 
naval officer, 157 

Valdes, Pedrode, Spanish naval of- 
ficer, 157, 161 

Vandals, 71, 72 

Veneiro, Venetian admiral, 101-103, 
105 

Vengeur du Peuple, French ship, 
228, 230 



Venice, early history of, 82, 85 ; 
commerce of, 87-89, 442; at war 
with Turks, 90-109; ships of, 147 

Vikings, 49, 71, 83, 130-131 

Villaret de Joyeuse, French ad- 
miral, at First of June, 228-231 

Villeneuve, French admiral, 224; 
at the Nile, 250; in Trafalgar 
campaign and battle, 265-270, 273- 
276 

Virginia Capes, battle of, 68, 201, 
207-211, 442 

W. 

Wangenheim, Baron von, 357 

Wei-hai-wei, 310, 329 

William II, German emperor, 328, 

345, 347, 448 
William III of England, 193, 194 
William, Prince of Orange, 134, 137, 

140 
Wilson, Woodrow, President of 

United States, 387 - 
Winter, Dutch admiral, 235 
Witjeft, Russian admiral, 331, 333 

X.-Y.-Z. 

Xerxes, 28, 31, 32-39 

"Y-guns," 431 

Yalu, battle of, 304-310 

York, Duke of, afterward James 

II of England, 184, 190 
Zama, battle of, 60 
Zeebrugge, attack on, 433-435 



LbJL': 



